


the genteel season of marriage

by Heather



Category: due South
Genre: Angst and Humor, Cake, Cold Feet, F/M, Family Drama, Flashbacks, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gift Fic, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties, Underage Drug Use, Wedding Planning, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-18
Updated: 2013-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-03 13:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1071221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heather/pseuds/Heather
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A countdown of memories and obstacles on the way to Stella and Ray Vecchio's wedding, with guest appearances by their families and exes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the genteel season of marriage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [malnpudl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malnpudl/gifts).



> This was edited on April 19th, 2014 to remove some typos that neither my beta nor my spellchecker caught. Oops.

* * *

**Five Cakes**

* * *

_Summer, 1978 - Stoned Cake_

"Ready?" Ray asked.

Stella glanced over at the rest of the party, where her mother was busy talking to some business associate or other of her father's that had been invited because he had a daughter around Stella's age. She peered a little harder at the crowd of people, trying to see if her dad was still mixing drinks at the bar for one of her mother's friends. Both, it seemed, were far enough away. She looked back to Ray and nodded.

Ray re-lit the tip of the joint he was holding and passed it to her. "Just kinda inhale and try to hold it in."

She took it from him with unsteady fingers, brought it to her lips, and inhaled. Immediately her chest started to hurt and her lungs fought hard to kick it out. She handed the joint back to Ray so she could cover her mouth with both hands to try and hold the coughs in.

Ray laughed a little. "Easy," he soothed. "Don't kill yourself."

Her eyes watered and she finally exhaled, gasping fresh air down right away. "When is this going to start to get fun?"

"Not after just one hit," he said, looking amused.

They were tucked away in the breezeway off the patio between her house and her garage- a pretty nice hiding place, all things considered, since they were just far away enough that no one could see them, but close enough to hear it and see it if anyone called or started looking for them. Bad manners, Stella supposed- the party they were avoiding was her sixteenth birthday party, arranged along the lines of an old-fashioned coming out party, where all of her parents' friends and associates were in attendance with their children Stella's age. Somehow, very few people Stella was actually friends with herself had managed to make the guest list, and the party itself was rather dull and overcrowded. She felt like the prince in "Cinderella," glazed-eyed and yawning through introduction after introduction to suitable people the king had invited to the ball.

Ray wasn't exactly Cinderella- he had been brought not so much by pumpkin carriage as the older, slightly rundown car that he and his father futzed with on the weekends to keep it running, and no one here had noticed him in any particular way. (Not to mention that Stella somewhat doubted that Cinderella would've been carrying a nickelbag of marijuana on her person to get high just out of the other guests' line of sight.) But he was the only one here she really wanted to talk to, and she had been glued to his side every possible second since he'd gotten here.

The pot, apparently, had been his older brother's idea of a birthday present. Nice of him, since the guest list had had a one Kowalski limit.

Ray took another drag and handed the joint back to her. His face was screwed up in concentration, his eyes squenched shut tight behind his glasses, while he held it in. It didn't seem as hard for him as it had been for Stella. He exhaled in a huge, relieved sigh while Stella tried to get through her second puff.

"You sure this isn't gonna mess up the rest of your party?" he asked.

Stella fought to uncross her eyes and tried to answer while her lungs were full of smoke. "Hard to see how this party could get much worse."

"It's not that bad," Ray said.

Stella laughed. "I think you're already stoned."

Ray let out a laugh of his own. "Nah, but I think you might be. Ragging on your own party and all that."

Stella took her third drag and passed it back to him. There might be something to what he said. Her eyes were still watering and she felt like trying to explain things to him in detail. "I hate parties like this," she said. "When we get married, I never, ever want to have parties like this."

Ray laughed again, clouds of smoke escaping his mouth and engulfing them. "When we do what?"

She tried to remember what she had said. She seemed to have already forgotten it. Oh. "Get married," she said, gesturing limply from herself to him and back, her hand flopping back and forth in a way that fascinated her a little. Stella couldn't remember being so aware of her own wrist before. "Didn't you want to get married to me?"

"I was thirteen," he reminded her. He tilted his head back to puff a few smoke rings into the air. Stella reached out to waggle her fingers inside one of them, watching it dissolve. "Not that I wouldn't wanna," he said. "But I districtly remember being thirteen the last time I said that."

Stella was vaguely aware that he had gotten a word wrong somewhere, but couldn't think of which one, or how to correct it. She gave up. "I'm _speculating_ ," she said.

"Okay, okay," he said. "So speculate."

"Right," she said. "Where was I again?"

"You don't want to have parties like this when we get married," he said.

"Right!" She remembered it now. "I hate parties like this. I don't like having all these people. I don't even know most of these people."

"What if we know this many people?" he asked.

"How could we ever know this many people?" Stella gestured between them again, mostly for the purpose of observing the way her wrist moved. There were all sorts of tiny little _things_ moving as she did, giving her the mental image of her own wrist as being full of gears, like a pocket watch. "I don't think we could ever know this many people."

"We'll have jobs," he said. "That's lots of people."

"What, are we going to invite every criminal I don't convict?" she asked. Becoming a lawyer was a recentish dream, at least in terms of how much thought she'd put into whether she'd really like to do it. But other than maybe marrying Ray and never having large parties, it was about the only after high school thing she had in mind.

"I bet they'd have really good weed," Ray said, grinning at her.

Stella burst out laughing, then realized that she was probably laughing too loud and covered her mouth again with her hands. Ray peered around the edge of the wall to see if anyone had noticed, then looked back to her with a reassuring shake of his head.

"We can't get stoned all the time," she said. "We'll have to be..." She tried to remember the word she was thinking of.

"Grown-ups?" Ray suggested.

That didn't seem like the word she had been searching for, but she went with it, anyway. "Yeah," she said. "Grown-ups don't get stoned at all their parties."

"I dunno," he said. "I think your parents would if they thought they could get away with it."

"Why wouldn't they get away with it?" she asked. Whether or not they really would, or why Ray would think so, didn't seem to want to penetrate the surface of her brain.

Ray seemed to think about this. "Good point," he said. "Your parents could be wasted _right now._ "

Stella burst into giggles again. The thought of her mother greeting all of the guests while stoned was funnier than anything she could imagine at the moment.

As if thoughts could summon their subjects (which seemed very likely to Stella at the moment), her mother chose then to pop in the mouth of the breezeway. "There you are! Stella, I've been looking _everywhere_ for you!"

Stella started to send a panicked look at Ray and the joint that a second ago he had been holding, but the joint seemed to be gone and Ray had a very wide-eyed, uncomfortable look on his face. She looked reluctantly back to her mother. "Well," she said, wondering suddenly how high she looked and sounded, "I'm- I'm here."

"Well, come on," her mother said. "Your father's about to cut your cake." She turned to give Ray a polite hostess smile. "Enjoying the party, Ray?"

"Mmmhmm," he hummed, nodding. He still looked uncomfortable, and as if he didn't dare open his mouth.

"You really need me for the cake-cutting?" Stella asked, trying to look innocent and not at all like her skin was crawling over every inch of her body with guilt and a mounting terror of discovery.

Her mother gave her a disapproving frown. "Stella," she said. Her tone was so reproving on its own that she didn't seem to feel she needed to follow it up with anything.

"Okay, okay," Stella said. "Give me a second, all right?"

Her mother sighed heavily. "Stella," she repeated, still in that tone.

Stella looked again at Ray. He shrugged, nodded, and gestured for her to follow her mother all at once. She frowned at him, but gave her own shrug. As she turned to follow her mother out of the breezeway, she thought she heard him spitting, gagging, and coughing.

"The birthday girl!" Her mother announced as she pulled Stella up to where her father was standing next to the cake. Stella felt two things, simultaneously: paranoid that her mother's grip on her arm had been because she could tell her daughter was stoned and had worried she couldn't walk on her own, and suddenly very hungry.

The cake was an enormous, five-tiered monstrosity that, sitting on its little table, was taller than she was. It was covered mostly with white icing, but there was neon pink piping along every edge with sugar roses on top of each tier. The first time she had seen it, Stella had worried that it was too big and too ridiculous for them to be able to serve it to everyone there, and that they'd be stuck with weeks of leftovers. Now Stella felt a little worried that there wouldn't be enough for everyone. She felt she could, without difficulty or complaint, eat the entire thing.

As she drew near enough for him to reach, Stella's father stretched out an arm to wrap it around her shoulders. Somewhere nearby, a camera went off, and Stella shook her head like a wet dog to try and clear her vision of bright green bubbles. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she felt her mother pinch her arm to bring her back to company manners.

"Sixteen years," her father said, pitching his voice loud enough to be heard by everyone in attendance. Stella wished he hadn't done that; now she couldn't stop looking at all of the people, sure that every one of them could tell that she was high, that all of them were going to point it out, and soon she'd be arrested. Clapped in irons, thrown in prison, disappoint her parents, and be denied cake. She felt dizzy and weak and like she should be planning an escape route. She cast her eyes about madly for Ray, wondering how she had allowed herself to be separated from him and his experience with this kind of stuff. (And, come to it, his access to a car they could use to flee.)

Her father continued on like he didn't notice her. "I never would have believed it, when she was a baby. It seems like it's only been a day."

Stella searched the crowd again for Ray, and found him standing next to the refreshment table, his glasses pushed up on his forehead, wiping his tongue with a napkin like this was not at all weird. She giggled before she could stop herself.

This time, she was sure her mother pinched her.

"Stella," her father said, turning to her. "I want you to know how proud your mother and I are of you- of how well you've grown up."

Her skin felt even more like it would slither off her bones and crawl across the floor. All she wanted was him to stop talking so she could hide somewhere with cake until she came down.

"Many of you don't know this," her father said, addressing the party, "but Stella finished this previous school year on the Honor Roll, in the top five percent of her class." The rest of the party gave a cursory round of applause. Her father looked at her again. "We are thrilled, Stella, with your accomplishments, and we look forward to what you'll do in the future."

Stella gave him a feeble smile. She looked at the rest of the party and gave them a just as feeble wave, and wondered how many of them now were asking themselves how she maintained her average when she couldn't even attend her own birthday party without toking up. She squashed the urge to explain to them all that no, really, this was the first time. This was not normal behavior for her at all.

Her father raised his glass to her, and Stella tried to remember when he had even had a glass before. It looked to her like he had just somehow pulled it out of the air. "My beautiful daughter," he said. "A mature, responsible, sober young lady, with her head on straight and her feet on the ground."

Stella covered her mouth so she wouldn't burst out laughing at "sober," and hoped that everyone else thought she was just overcome with emotion. Somewhere out in the party, she could hear sniggering, and she had the feeling that was Ray.

"Happy birthday, darling," her father said. "And many more!"

The applause this time was a little better than cursory, and she thought she heard Ray whistle with approval. Her father turned away from her so that he could cut her cake, and Stella wiped her sweaty palms on her dress. The camera went off again and she swore to herself that she would murder the photographer when she felt up to it.

Her father held out the inaugural piece of cake to her, and Stella held out her hands, realizing about a second too late that she hadn't grabbed a plate on her way over. She jerked her hands away and gave her father an embarrassed grin. He chuckled while her mother shook her head and picked up one of the delicate china plates that they had ordered just for the occasion. These were bone white, with a spray of pale pink flowers in the middle, and her full name and birthdate written along the edge of what Stella supposed was the top. The opposite edge was labeled "Sweet Sixteen" in a loopy cursive that Stella suspected might have been handpainted.

Once the cake mess had been sorted, Stella fled to the other side of the garden as fast as she could without tripping over the stupid dress her mother had made her wear. She took a seat behind a large potted hydrangea bush and scooted out of sight.

Her dress had a large pink stain on the front.

Stella winced. She may not have tripped over the dress, but it seemed that in her hurry to get away from all the attention, she had hugged her plateful of cake to it. She tried to wipe it off, but that seemed to make it worse. She looked as though she had a candy heart that bled fondant roses, and it had been cut out.

"Oh, damn it," she muttered. She wiped at the stain with her fingers, then licked the icing off of them. It was a little too sugary for her regular tastes, she thought, and yet somehow, it was still the best thing she had ever tasted. She looked around to make sure no one could see her, and plucked at her neckline and craned her neck to try and lick at the bright pink mess. Mmm. Cake.

"Hey, you know, I could do that for you."

She dropped the front of her dress right away. She scowled. "Ray."

He grinned at her and offered her a napkin. He had gotten his own plate of cake while she had been trying to suck icing off her front.

Stella took the napkin from him and wiped at the stain again, but she had the feeling that the dress was a wash. "You look like you did okay with your plate."

"Dunno how much I'll like it," he said. He stuck out his tongue. "Kinda blustered."

Stella tried to remember the word he had been going for this time, but it seemed like too much effort. She leaned forward and licked his tongue instead.

Ray ducked his head away, laughing. "Oh, gross, Stell," he said.

"You let me do that all the time," she said, sticking her own tongue back out at him.

"Yeah, with our mouths closed," he said, leaning forward to kiss her properly, as if to demonstrate the appropriate method for tongue to tongue contact. She giggled against his lips and pulled back.

Ray smiled a little at her and lifted up his piece of cake. "Want mine?"

"More than anything in the world right now," Stella admitted. The dress wasn't really doing the dessert justice.

He held his piece in reach of her mouth and she nibbled at it for a moment, letting her eyes drift closed with delight. That was the stuff.

Ray leaned forward and whispered in her ear, "Don't worry. I don't think anyone noticed you were high."

It was very difficult to eat the rest of the piece when she was laughing, but Stella made a solid try.

\-----

_Fall, 1986 - Bad Cake_

"Smile for the birdie, rookies," the photographer said.

"We're allowed to smile in these?" Ray asked under his breath, nudging Laurie with his elbow.

She ignored him, plastering a huge smile on her face. "Is my hat on straight?" she asked through her teeth.

"Eh, straight enough," he said. He gave his own grin for the camera just before the flash went off. Wow, Jesus, that hurt. His vision swam with bright shapes and he rubbed at his eyelids. "I'm blind," he said.

"Call it your first injury in the line of duty," Laurie said. "Take it on the chin, Vecchio."

Ray rubbed at his eyelids again and gave her a look. "You know, when I swore to protect and serve at risk of injury or death, this wasn't what I had in mind."

Laurie rolled her eyes. "You're not going to make it five minutes on the street," she said. "Big baby."

"Yeah, well, same to you," he said. "Chasing bad guys will probably mess up your hat."

"Very funny," she said. "Go get cake and then rein in your sister. She's still making puppy eyes at Marooni, and I don't think he knows she's jailbait."

Ray glanced over to his family, and, sure enough, Frannie was ignoring him completely in favor of looking at Marooni like she had never seen a guy in uniform before. He groaned. "Oh, son of a--" He started nudging his way through the other new cops before his sister gave him cause to make his first arrest without even getting to pick up his handcuffs, his gun, and his real badge first.

It was his graduation from the police academy, and already, the job was less fun than he had imagined it would be when he was a kid. He shook his head to himself. He couldn't take his family anywhere.

Jesus, it was crowded in here. He tried to squeeze between a couple of people who were in line at the table.

"Hey! Watch it, rook!" This from a dark-haired lady cop that Ray didn't know.

"'Scuse me," he said, making a face at her. He had caught her elbow in his chest just as much as she'd been stumbled into. Ray rubbed at it resentfully.

"Oh, that's nice," she said. "You plan on getting in good with all your superiors that way, or am I special?"

"Hey, look--" Ray glanced at the nametag pinned to her uniform. "--Tehrani, it was an accident, all right? I'd like to talk to my family, if that's okay with you."

Tehrani rolled her eyes at him. "Who's stopping you?"

Ray glared. "You know what? No one." He cornered around her, ignoring a couple more "Hey! Watch it!"s that went up around him and headed for Frannie again. She had managed to slip away from Ma and Maria, and was now bearing down on Marooni like a bloodhound. A very friendly bloodhound with feathered hair and jelly bracelets, but no less determined for all that.

Marooni, for his part, did not seem to mind and was beaming invitation at her from every plane and angle on his face, like he didn't really care about civilized society's rules on not hitting on your fellow officer's baby sisters. Ray quickened his pace. He and Frannie got to Marooni at the same time.

Marooni looked as if he wasn't sure which of them to respond to first, and went with a vague, pleasant, "Hey, Vecchio."

Frannie, of course, decided he meant her. "Hey there," she said, grinning at him.

"No 'hey there,'" Ray said. "What, you escaped from Ma, just to make my life more difficult?"

Marooni looked puzzled. "She's not really doing anything--"

"And it's gonna stay that way," Ray said.

Frannie gave an angry little huff, as if she was the wounded party in this situation. "Don't be a pig, Ray."

"Too late for that," he said. "I'm getting a badge and everything."

It looked like Ray was going to have a lot of women rolling their eyes at him today. Frannie joined the list, complete with a scoff. "Very funny."

Marooni still didn't seem to get the problem. "She was just saying hi. I don't mind."

" _I_ mind," Ray said. Horrible visions were dancing through his head of Frannie hanging out at the station to get a glimpse of and flirt on with his co-workers, and _that_ was going to happen over his dead body.

"Hey, calm down," Marooni said. "What's the big deal?"

"She's sixteen," Ray said. Now seemed as good a time as any to work on the whole cop persona, so he gave him his best _You wanna keep going down this road, buddy?_ look to follow it up with.

"Oh," Marooni said. He looked a little deflated. Ray kept giving him the look. Marooni looked uncomfortably back at Frannie and said, "Nice meeting you," and seemed to remember somewhere else he had to be.

Frannie glared at Ray and smacked his arm. "What'd you have to go and do that for?"

"What, tell somebody the truth?" Ray asked. He turned the look on her, but it turned out that it was fairly ineffective on sisters. Frannie, at least, looked unimpressed.

"You're a jerk," she said.

"Hey, I'm looking out _for you,_ " Ray said. Well, technically, he was looking out for his future career environment, but potato, potahto.

Frannie huffed again and started walking away.

"You better be going back to Ma!" Ray yelled after her.

Frannie flipped him off over her shoulder and didn't stop walking.

Ray scowled. "You little--" he muttered to himself.

"You're making friends all over the place, aren't you, Vecchio?"

Ray turned around. It was Tehrani again. She was watching him with her arms folded across her chest, looking amused.

"What are you, following me?" Ray asked.

She gave an unapologetic shrug. "You looked like you were going somewhere important."

"And that's your business how?" Ray stepped around her and headed for the table, which was less crowded now. It seemed like a prime opportunity to get something to eat.

She shrugged again, still following him and not looking the least bit sorry about it. "Hate to break it to you, rook, but you're in _public._ Stuff you do _in public_ is stuff that pretty much everybody's invited to watch. That's why it's called _public._ "

Ray cut himself a piece of cake. "Anyone ever tell you you're really annoying, _Tyranny?"_ he asked.

"Oh, I never heard that one before," she said, snorting. "And that's _Officer_ Tyranny to you."

Ray didn't know it was possible before this to look vengeful about eating cake, but he had the feeling he did, between how hard he stabbed the piece with his plastic fork, and how pointedly he bit it, as if trying to communicate to her via dessert that he had more pressing and important things to deal with than annoying- beautiful, but annoying- women. He almost spit it out again immediately. "Geez," he said. "Are they trying to poison us with this?"

Tehrani laughed. "Never been to one of these before? The food's always terrible."

"No," he said. "Why would I have been to one of these before?"

"Most people go to the academy 'cause they had a dad or a grandpa who was a cop," she said, as if this should be obvious. "Brothers and sisters, too."

"Yeah, well, I didn't," Ray said. "Why? Did you?"

"Grandpa and uncle," she said promptly. "Two brothers, too."

Ray scowled at her. Why was everyone in the entire city of Chicago trying to make his graduation unpleasant? Couldn't he just eat cake and enjoy being a cop for five freaking minutes? He didn't know why it annoyed him that this woman came from one of the cop legacy families, but it did, and more importantly, it felt like something she was doing on purpose _just_ to annoy him. "Yeah, well, who asked you?"

Tehrani laughed again. "You did, kiddo."

Ray made a face. "Oh, do not call me that," he said. "Do not. You're barely older than me." He looked at her. "You're probably not even older than me. You probably always wanted to be a cop and never thought of doing anything else and came up the second you had a chance."

If this commentary on her career prospects was supposed to bother her the way she was bothering him, it didn't work. Tehrani smiled at him and said, "Guilty as charged. What about you, Vecchio?"

"Private," he said.

"Ooh, touchy," she said. "You get assigned to my station, I'm keeping you away from the coffee. You obviously need to be wound less tight."

"I'm not wound tight!" Ray protested. "I got a lot on my mind right now! And you're being agitating on purpose!"

Tehrani grinned at him. "Maybe I'm pulling your pigtails," she said. "Ever think of that?"

That brought Ray up short. "Are you?" he asked. For some reason, it hadn't occurred to him that she might be interested. Or that he might like it if she was. Probably because she was annoying.

"Maybe," she said, still grinning. She pointed at herself with her thumb. "Angie."

Ray gave her a suspicious look for a second, still not sure if she was serious about the pigtails thing, but he offered her his hand. "Ray," he said.

She shook it. "Much nicer to meet you this way," she said. "You know, as opposed to the smashing on your way to go piss off somebody else."

Ray laughed. "Yeah, well, it's my curse," he said.

"I can tell," Angie said. "Guessing that was your sister?"

"One of 'em," he said. He glanced around for Frannie, and was somewhat relieved that she was sitting in corner, looking very put out that word seemed to have filtered through the party that she was underage. He looked back to Angie. "The younger, more annoying one."

"I've been that one," Angie said. "with more annoying brothers than you, even."

"Hey, I can be pretty annoying," Ray said.

"Believe me, I got that idea," she said. But she smiled as she said it, and it turned out that she actually looked pretty nice when she smiled and it wasn't a making-you-miserable-because-I-can smile. "But not much beats half-Italian, half-Persian cop brothers who think they rule your life." Angie glanced at Frannie by the wall, and then back to him. "Besides, she looked like she was holding her own okay."

"Yeah, she does that," Ray said. "She's the baby. She's used to it."

"How many in your family?" she asked.

"Four," he said. "Me, my brother, two sisters. You?"

"Three," she said. "Just me and the other two cops."

"Same precinct?" he asked.

"Oh, God, no," Angie said, laughing in combined relief and horror. "No, no, no. I can hold my own, too, but that, I couldn't handle. It would've made my ma happy, but--" She shrugged.

"I'm hoping that Frannie doesn't decide to follow me around my precinct for the rest of my life," he said. "I can relate."

"She's a badge bunny?" Angie asked.

"Very recently," Ray said. "As in, within the last twenty minutes."

"Ouch," she said. "Watch out for that. It'll get you in trouble."

"What do you think I'm trying to do?" Ray asked, giving her a mock-wounded look. "You know, this is the problem with sisters. You think that brothers look out for you just to ruin your lives. Do you ever think that it ruins ours?"

"That doesn't make it not fun," Angie said. The grin was back, although Ray found that this time, he maybe didn't mind it so much.

Ray leaned in a little closer to her and casually struck a pose. "So, uh, if I do get assigned to your station, I don't have to worry about your brothers?"

Angie laughed. "Oh, look who's suddenly got teeth in him," she said.

"Better teeth than pigtails," he said.

"Uh-huh," she said. She shook her head, looking amused. "Okay, fine, I'll take it. You saying you're interested?"

"I thought you said you were," Ray said. He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

She gave him a coy look. "Maybe I'm not anymore," she said. "Maybe you're starting to look like more trouble than you're worth."

"Oh, believe me," he said. "I'm worth it."

Angie laughed. "Well, at least confidence isn't a problem." She stepped a little back from him and looked at the plate of cake he was still holding. "Think maybe if we put some sugar on that from the coffee station, it'll be tolerable?"

Ray gave the cake a dubious look. The cake itself was all but flavorless, the icing a bit like butter if anything. "I'm not sure there's any saving this," he said, "but we can give it a try."

"Don't worry," she said. "I won't make you eat it if it sucks." She took him by the elbow and dragged him over to the table where the coffee pot sat, surrounded by baskets of sugar, Sweet 'n Low, and Half and Half. She grabbed a sugar packet and started shaking it back and forth to try and loosen the sugar up. She was apparently the type who liked to rip packets open with her teeth and spit the little bit of paper out, because that was exactly what she did next.

"Oh, that is disgusting," Ray said, making a face.

Angie snickered. "What's your problem? You're afraid of a little spit?"

"No," Ray said. "I just object to the possibility of getting a little spit in my food."

"You said the cake sucked, anyway," she said. "How do you know my spit wouldn't be an improvement?"

Ray considered the cake. "You know, it might be?" he said.

She gave a cute little laugh and held the sugar packet over his plate. "You want to try, then?"

"Yeah, fine, sure," he said. "I'll let you know if I like the taste of your spit."

"Well, if you like it, there's more where it came from," she grinned, sprinkling the sugar over the cake.

"You suggesting something untoward there, Tehrani?" he asked, grinning back at her.

"Keep playing your cards right," she said. She gave the cake a dubious look and added another packet of sugar.

Ray started to reach for his fork. His hand smashed into hers at the same time. He'd been focused on the sprinkling hand and not watching the other. "Hey," he said.

"Hey, what?" Angie asked. "What, I don't get to try? It was my idea!"

"It's your spit!" he said. "You know what your own spit tastes like!"

She rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Vecchio."

"All right, all right," he said. " _Fine._ I will go halves with you on disgusting cake. I hope that makes you happy."

"It does," she said, looking smug.

Ray carved the cake in half with the fork tines and then set the fork aside. It didn't seem fair to him at the moment to hang onto it when there was only one. He picked up his half- the smaller one, ha- with his fingers and watched as she did the same.

"Count of three?" she asked.

"Yeah, sure," he said. "One--"

She shifted the cake in her hand so that she could shovel it in very quickly. "Two."

Ray tried not to laugh. This felt like being a kid again, challenging one of his siblings to eating dirt or worms and seeing who would flinch first. Ray hadn't won very often. He liked to think it meant he was less gross than his brother and sisters. "Three!"

They both scooped cake into their mouths as quickly as possible. It wasn't much improved, by either the sugar or whatever minuscule amounts of Angie's spit might've lingered from the packet. It mostly tasted like a layer of sugar over very bland, disgusting cake. Ray swallowed it, anyway.

Angie did, too. She looked at him expectantly. "What's the verdict?" she asked.

Ray considered the fact that future tastes of her spit- which implied access to her mouth- were at stake here, and decided to grin at her. "Best I've ever had," he said. "You?"

"I think it's pretty awful," she said.

Ray gave her a mock-wounded look. "Are you impugning my taste in cake?"

"Nah," she said. "Just your taste in romantic gestures."

"Ange," he said, "you haven't seen anything yet."

She laughed at him again. Ray was starting to like the sound of her laughing. It got better every time. She quirked a smile at him. "So you gonna ask me out, Vecchio?"

"What?" he asked. "Just because your spit can magically improve cake?"

"I think that's a pretty good reason, don't you?" she asked.

"You got a point," he said.

She gave him a fake-modest look and a little shrug. "I usually do," she said. "You'll get used to it."

"Ha ha," he said. Then he smiled. "I'll think about it."

\-----

_Winter, 1979 - Secret Cake_

Stella rushed from the church as fast as she could, holding Ray's hand in one of hers and the train of her dress in the other. She was aware that most people leaving their own weddings probably weren't supposed to be thinking about how easy formal wear was to trip over, but she was sure that those people had never gotten married in Chicago on Christmas Eve. The ice that had formed during their ceremony was bad enough without the added complication of several feet of taffeta.

Ray, for his part, did not seem to be thinking about what he was wearing. (Easy for him, she thought. He was wearing a tux.) He was grinning like a maniac, like he had just pulled off the world's greatest con job, like every wish he had ever had had just come true all at once. It helped to take her mind off the dress.

"Slow down," she said, giggling. "I'm going to fall."

"Nah," he said. "If I stop, _I'm_ going to fall."

Stella giggled again. "What are you going to do if I fall while I'm holding your hand?"

Ray turned to her, neatly parlaying it into a hop off the icy sidewalk, then into another little jump onto the snow. He wrapped his arms around her waist, and gave her one of his intense, passionate looks that made her forget the rest of the world and do idiotic things, just to get him to look at her like that again. "I'll catch you," he said.

Stella couldn't decide whether she wanted to beam at him or gasp a little over the intensity of the sentiment, and she ended up doing both. She wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He kissed her back, slowly, deliberately, and hugged her tight enough to lift her off her feet. Stella broke away from his mouth to let out a high, shrieking laugh. "You're going to get us killed," she scolded.

"No, I'm not," he said. Normally, he would've pouted at her, at any aspersions she cast on his manly arms and their ability to carry her, but he seemed to be too high on the wedding to be bothered. He kissed her again and swung her around so he could set her down in the snow. Stella had a feeling that the hem of her wedding dress was going to be ruined beyond repair by day's end.

They had already done the part where they exited through the front of the church to take pictures and toss her bouquet (lacking very many guests, it had actually been caught by Ray's mother, who had laughed and blushed and been kissed by his dad, like a reaffirmation of their commitment), and now they were escaping out the back way to where Ray's car was parked, to head for their reception. (As much as it could be called a reception; they were going to dinner with their parents, Ray's brother, and his brother's girlfriend.) The car had not endured the traditional wedding day vandalism, as far as Stella could tell from here. No tin cans or old shoes were tied to the back, no "just married" sign hung on the window. In a way, she actually felt relieved about that; at least one thing was the same as it had been the day before. The car hadn't been turned into a marriage mobile; it was the same make-out machine it had been since Ray had gotten it back when she was fifteen.

Stella took hold of Ray's hand again and began carefully trudging through the snow bank to the car. Jesus, high heels were not made for climbing through the snow in. Why on earth hadn't she brought another pair of shoes for after the ceremony was over? There was snow inside her shoes already and her feet were so cold, they were starting to sting.

"Hey," Ray said, "I got a surprise for you when we get to the car."

Stella tried to look over her shoulder at him and immediately lost her balance in the snow. True to his word, Ray reached forward to clasp her waist in his hands, catching her before she tumbled into the cold, wet powder.

Less true to his word, he overbalanced the second he had her weight, and he tumbled into the snow, Stella landing on top of him. They both burst out laughing when they hit the ground.

"Very cool," she said, giggling. "Very smooth."

"Shut up," Ray said. He was still laughing. "Like you never tripped in snow before."

"Usually not after promising it wouldn't happen," she teased. She bent to kiss him again to take away any sting the words might've had.

Ray tangled his hand in her hair and smiled at her as they broke apart. "Okay, maybe not the smoothest thing ever," he admitted.

"Not really," Stella said. "But it was cute."

Ray grinned at her. His eyes were alight with _Ooh, my, is that something that I can use to fuel my ego?_ mischief. "How cute?"

Stella tried to glare at him. It was pretty hard when he was looking at her like that. Ruefully, she thought that it always had been. She broke up giggling again.

"Less cute every second I'm still in the snow," she said. "Can we get up, please? I'm freezing!"

"Wuss," Ray said, but he began working to get them both to their feet.

"I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to call a bride a wuss on her wedding day," Stella said. "I think that's in the Bible." She did her best to look stern.

"Sure," Ray said. "I can see that. First Dalmatians, right?"

"I think it's called Galatians," Stella said.

"Now I know you're making it up," Ray said.

Stella shook her head, smiling. "So what's the surprise?"

"I told you," he said. "It's in the car."

"That's _where_ it is," she said, "not _what_ it is."

Ray looked exasperated. "If I told you what it is, it wouldn't be a surprise."

"It'd make me happy, though," she said, giving him a wide smile, inviting him to humor her. "I seem to recall that you did just take vows to that effect."

Ray gave her back his own wide smile, politely declining the invitation. "I did," he said. "But, you know. Two minutes. Patience is a talent and all that."

"Virtue," she corrected.

"Same difference," he said. He held her hand again as they went back to trudging through the snow. Stella managed to walk with him for five seconds before she was tugging his arm, pulling him to her and knocking them both down in the snow again.

Ray laughed. "Hey, what was that for?"

"I wanted to," she said. She feathered kisses across each of his cheekbones before bending to his mouth. Ray moaned against her lips and slid his arms behind her back in the snow. A bunch of it crushed up between them, soaking through her dress so that she really wanted to shriek about the cold.

"You're crazy," he said.

"So are you," she reminded him.

"Just where you're concerned," he said. He rubbed his chin against her neck. She could feel little prickles of blond, all-but-invisible stubble growing back in from where he had shaved it off sometime early this morning. She hadn't been with him for that part; he had spent the night at his older brother's place, along with his father, while she had slept at his parents' house, to be gotten up and dressed by their mothers.

"I love you," she said.

"Love you, too," Ray said. He kissed her lips. "Can we try this without the falling down, please?"

Stella snickered. "Yeah, okay." She started to stand up.

She had barely gotten to her feet when Ray grasped her wrist and yanked her back down, kissing her when she landed.

She barely kissed him back before breaking off to squeal indignantly, "I thought you wanted to try this without falling down!"

"Yeah, well," Ray said, looking unrepentant, "I owed you that one."

Stella kissed him, but landed a few weak, girly slaps on his arm just for good measure. "Jerk," she said, giggling.

"I don't think you're allowed to call a groom a jerk on his wedding day," Ray said. "That's in the Bible. I read it in Dalmatians."

"Shut up," she said, though it was probably hard for him to make out. She could barely understand herself through the laughter.

Ray stood up and helped her up this time. He kept his arm slung around her shoulders and she nestled closely against his side while they managed, at last, to make it down to the car. It wasn't easy to get in once they got there; the passenger's side door was frozen shut, hard enough that Ray had to throw all his weight into the pull to be able to open it for her. Stella sat down and yanked it closed while he moved to the driver's side. She could see her breath fogging in the air. It was almost colder in the car than it was outside.

Ray got in the driver's side and started the car. The heat was already turned on, though the air that blasted out of the vents was icy at first. Stella cringed and sat on her hands to protect them. It didn't help much. Her dress was still rather wet.

"Okay," she said. "What's the surprise?"

"You sure you want it?" Ray asked. He looked suddenly trepidatious, as if he was worried she wouldn't like whatever it was.

Stella gave him a reassuring smile. "Thrill me," she said.

Ray laughed. "Okay," he said. "But remember, you asked for it. Close your eyes."

Stella obeyed, though now with her own sense of nervousness. What, exactly, had he gotten her? Against her will, she remembered him telling her about the dog he used to have when he was a kid, who had died a year or two before they met, and how he had always wanted one. He wouldn't keep a puppy in this car alone when it was this cold, would he? Ray could be impulsive and impractical, but surely he hadn't done that. She strained her ears for the sound of any animal whimpers, but all she could hear was the seat creaking as Ray reached for something in the backseat.

"Okay," he said. "Open 'em."

When she opened her eyes, they went wide almost right away. He was holding a tiny white cake, the kind of thing that would've been the top tier on a real wedding cake, the kind that they hadn't been able to fit into their budget and wouldn't have had enough time to have made even if they'd had the money, their church wedding had been thrown together so quickly. The top was decorated with a spray of petals from candied violets, a soft, lovely purplish blue, and in the center was a pair of real ceramic bride and groom figures, both blonde with tiny hand-painted faces, like something you'd get at C.D Peacock's.

Stella gasped and stared. "Oh, Ray," she said.

"You were bummed out that we couldn't get cake," he said. "So. I got you cake."

She raised her hand to her throat, where she could feel a lump forming in it. With difficulty, she said, "Oh, it's wonderful, but- Ray, we can't afford this."

"Sure, we can," he said. "It's bought, isn't it?"

"What did you have to sell?" she asked.

Ray looked at her firmly. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I took vows to make you happy, remember?"

Stella laughed a little. She tried to be discreet about wiping her eyes- it was the kind of thing that he'd normally tease her about for ages, crying over a cake- but it was a lost cause. "Oh, Ray," she said again.

He smiled at her. "So you like it?"

She slapped his shoulder again- carefully, so he wouldn't drop the cake. "Of course I like it! I love it! I can't believe you did this."

"Yeah, well, believe it," Ray said, grinning. "Now you want to eat this thing or what?"

"Just us?" Stella asked, thinking of their families waiting at a restaurant for them right now.

"I don't think there's enough here to split with everybody, Stell," Ray said. "Sorry."

Stella felt chagrined. "No, don't be," she said. "Let's just try to do it quickly so they don't have to wait a long time for us."

He smiled. "Yeah, okay."

It took a minute to find anything they could eat with in the car- Ray's thoughtfulness had not extended as far as silverware- but eventually, Stella found a plastic fork in the glove box and Ray found a pair of chopsticks under his seat, still in the paper. She pulled an elastic from her purse that he could use to bind them to his fingers. Ray hadn't yet worked out how to use chopsticks without one.

They each took small bits of cake from the edges, and- rather than eat the first bite himself, Ray offered her the end of his chopsticks. Stella laughed quietly and offered him her fork.

The cake was incredible. It red velvet on the inside, her personal favorite, and the icing was cream cheese flavored, instead of being the plain, sugary buttercream that her parents preferred. It couldn't have been better if she had picked it out and ordered it herself.

"Good?" Ray asked.

"Amazing," she said. She smiled at him, loving him with all of her heart and hoping that it was visible in her face.

It seemed it was. Ray stared at her as though she had magically transformed into the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He picked another piece of cake off the edge with his chopsticks and held it out to her. "Hey," he said, as she leaned in to take the bite. "I take you."

Stella swallowed the little piece and smiled back, offering him a piece on the end of her fork. "I take _you,_ " she said.

Ray ate his bite of cake and Stella watched him savor it- probably also savoring her words, and the promise they had just made.

Stella couldn't help feeling that from here on out, everything was going to be perfect.

\-----

_Spring, 1987 - Smash Cake_

"You look great, Ray," Ange whispered. From what he could tell, it was kind of a chore for her to do it. They were in the middle of walking arm in arm up the middle of a church while all their relatives were pelting them with handfuls of rice, and both of them were busy smiling at people. They hadn't spoken a word to each other up until now that wasn't part of the traditional ceremony.

If he was being honest, Ray had been pretty grateful for that so far. Ange looked freaking breathtaking in a pale pink dress (no frills, no foofaraw, no white- those had been her rules about choosing a wedding dress when Frannie and Maria had started squeaking at her like crazed Pomeranians when they'd announced their engagement) and Ray had felt sure all day that if he went offscript, he'd say something stupid, like, _"You have legs."_

He was pretty sure Ange knew she had legs. She probably even knew they were great legs, that looked even greater in the dress she'd chosen. She was pretty smart that way.

"You sure about that?" he asked under his breath. "I don't think anyone's looking at me."

"Well, of course no one's looking at you," she teased quietly. "But I am, and I like it."

Ray grinned at her. "I'll take it," he said, kissing her cheek.

There was more than his fair share of rice in Ray's shoes by the time they got to the car. Angie's seemed to have less. He actually had to take his shoes off and dump the excess rice on the limo floor; she just kinda tapped her toes by the door and had some come out her open-toed high heels.

"How'd you do that?" he asked. "I've practically got a Chinese buffet in my shoes, why are you unsullied?"

"Would you believe me if I said I'm magical?" she asked. She was taking her hair down from its bridal coif and combing her fingers through it. It loosened up pretty nice, not getting messed up at all, which sort of lent credence to that whole magical thing.

Ray decided to kiss her shoulder instead of answering.

"Mm." She shook her hair out a little, and then gave him a mischievous look. "You wanna do this in the car? Before we even get to the reception?"

Ray quirked his eyebrows. "Can we do that?"

"I think your whole family would be able to tell," she said. It didn't sound like she was trying to dissuade him. It never did, really; it was more like she was presenting the facts and letting him decide for himself whether that'd be a problem or not.

From where he was sitting right now, it was not. He kissed her again.

She laughed. "C'mon, Ray," she said. "We gotta at least save something for the honeymoon."

"Oh, that's rich, coming from you," he said. The first time they had ever made love was in Angie's squad car in her parents' driveway, the day she'd brought him to meet them. It had been her idea, and her efforts, and to this day, Ray still wasn't sure if her family knew or not. He hated to think that that was why her old man had never seemed to warm to him. It didn't exactly get much more embarrassing than that.

"Oh, sure, coming from me," Ange said. "Hark who's talking, Vecchio." The second time they had made love was in his parents' basement on Pop's old pool table. Ray had considered it a fitting revenge for how damn frigid his ass had gotten trying to do it in a car in Chicago in December.

"Okay, so we're both perverts," Ray admitted. "Nothing new about that." He plucked a little at her pink velvet neckline. "You really had to advertise with the pink dress? Who gets married for the first time in a pink dress?"

"If your sisters hadn't been there, it woulda been a red one," Ange said. "With flares and splits. Flamenco-style."

Ray leaned his neck against the back of the seat, laughing at the ceiling. "This is my life now," he said. "I can't believe this is my life."

Ange grinned. "You love it," she said.

"Yeah," Ray said, smiling at her. "I do."

A few minutes later, they got out of the car to head into the reception hall. Well. "Hall." Unlike the dress, Ange had picked this place all by herself- after a compromise in which Ray got to pick the church all by himself. Ray was feeling now like he had gotten the short end of that deal. The wedding had been over in an hour. The reception was going to last all night. And his bride- his _wife_ , he corrected himself- had thought that a fun place to have a reception was a freaking bowling alley.

And to top it all off, it was only now, in these few seconds after getting out of the car, that Ray was getting to find that out.

"Ange," he said, "you know I love you, but--"

She beamed at him. "Isn't it great?"

"It's a bowling alley," Ray said.

Angie looked at him as if she didn't understand the problem. "I know."

"It's a freaking bowling alley!" Ray repeated, trying to keep the incredulity in his voice to a minimum. "What possessed you to pick, of all places in the metro-Chicago area, a bowling alley? Who has a wedding reception in a bowling alley?"

Angie laughed. "You say 'bowling alley' one more time, it's going to stop sounding like a word," she said. "Besides, I got it for you."

Ray felt his head snap back and then shake, like he was so startled he couldn't contain the reflex. "What do you mean, for me?"

"Well, you always wanted one, didn't you?" she asked. "When you were a kid, that's what you wanted to do, before you settled on 'cop.'"

Ray stared. "Have you been talking to my ma?"

Ange gave him a beatific smile and shrugged. "Maybe."

Ray couldn't help it. He started laughing again. "Ange, I was _seven years old!"_

"And now you're married to a woman who's gonna let you live the dream," Angie said. She paused, then added, "You know, for a day. I'm not saying we can get one of these things when you retire or anything. But, hey, for a day? I can swing that."

"How's that going to work?" Ray asked. He felt suspiciously like he was being had. It was a pretty persistent feeling around Ange that never seemed to go away, mostly because it kept turning out to be true.

"Oh, you know," she said, "we'll go in, have beers, bowl a few frames- you can man the counter and trade all our guests' shoes for the right ones--"

"Shoes?!" Ray repeated. "Shoes?! It's my wedding day and you got me swapping out people's _shoes?"_

Angie leaned against the car, bent over with peals of laughter.

"Oh, my God, you're really going to make me handle people's shoes!" Ray stared at her in horror.

She kept laughing. Her eyes were starting to tear from it- Ray could see her mascara getting messed up at the corners. "No, I'm not," she said. "Relax, I'm messing with you."

Ray groaned and ran his hands back through his hair. "You're messing with me? Seriously? We've been married for twenty minutes!"

"I know," she said. "But the whole reason I married you is the way your voice gets all high when you're freaking out. Read the fine print."

Ray buried his face in her shoulder. "Keep it up," he said. "I can see the headline right now. Man Slays Wife After Bowling Reception Practical Joke Gone Wrong."

"Please, Vecchio," Angie said. "As if you could ever take me." She kissed his cheek. "C'mon."

In less than a minute, it was apparent that he wasn't the only one who hadn't known about this. Ange had included the address on the invitations, but not the small fact that they were having a reception in a bowling alley. Everybody on Ray's side of the family- and, he was pleased to note, most people on Ange's side, too- were blinking and looking confused as they headed inside.

Ray's mother flagged them down the second she got inside. "Raimundo, what is this?" she asked, looking suspicious.

Angie smiled at Ray. _Go ahead, honey,_ the smile seemed to say. _Start adapting your mother to your wife's sense of humor. You might as well get it over with- preferably in front of me, so I can watch._

Ray glared at her, then at his mother. "This, Ma, is what happens when you tell my wife things about my childhood."

Ma looked taken aback. "I was not part of this!"

Ray tried to sustain the glare, but it turned out to be pretty hard. He was still pretty happy about not actually having to be the shoe attendant. He gave it up and kissed his mother's cheek. "Nah, I know you weren't, Ma- this is just the kind of thing Angie thinks is funny."

Ma gave Angie a bewildered look, as if she couldn't fathom why on earth she would think this was funny, or for that matter, why anyone would want their wedding reception to be funny. Which, to be fair, she probably couldn't. Ma had taken the wedding and reception more seriously than him _or_ Ange from the first time they'd announced their engagement. She turned to Angie and shook her head in a despairing kind of way. "Angela," she said, sighing the deep sigh of the disappointed Italian mother, "why don't you take anything serious?"

It was the latest in about a hundred times that she had been asked that question. Ange reacted the way she always did. She smiled and kissed his mother's cheek, too. "If I did, Ma, there wouldn't be anything for you to do."

Ma shook her head again, but she patted Angie's cheek. "You're gonna be something," she said. "Where are you going to cut your cake in here?"

"Right over there," Ange pointed- and yep, there was the cake, Italian creme and taller than both of them, ready whenever they were. "Don't worry, Ma, I got it all worked out."

His mother muttered darkly in Italian and began scanning the crowd for Frannie to make sure she wasn't getting into the open bar. "Francesca!" she yelled, and started walking off.

Ray looked to Angie again. "She's right, ya know," he said. "You're something."

She beamed. "Yeah," she said. "That's why _you_ married _me._ "

"You know, if you pick now to start being right about things, I'm never gonna catch up," he said.

She patted his back. "I thought I'd get you used to it early."

The bowling alley turned out to be more fun than Ray would have expected if anyone had told him in advance that it was going to happen. He had adjusted a lot more quickly than everyone else, and he was a better bowler than most of them. He was drinking beer and beating Ange's brothers right up until it came time to cut the cake.

No one in his family really did speeches for this part, thank God- Ray was sure he couldn't have come up with one. This part was bound to be easy. Cut cake, give some to Ange, cut some for himself, feed it to each other, and wham-o. Free to go back to playing and winning until it was time to leave for the honeymoon. This, of course, counted on Ange behaving like a normal bride. He should've realized before he even handed the cake slice to her that that was a lost cause.

"You're just gonna let me eat this, right?" he asked, unable to keep the suspicious look off his face.

Angie shook her head pitifully, like she felt sorry for him. "Aw, Vecchio," she said, "haven't I taught you better than that yet?" And then she slammed the slice of cake dead center in his face.

She didn't stop with his face, either; Ray could feel her smearing the icing down his neck and on the front of his rented tux while all their family stood behind him, laughing their asses off.

Ray quickly rallied to the challenge. "Oh, I'm gonna get you for that--" He smooshed the piece in his hand against her nose and rubbed it around everywhere- her eyes, her cheeks, even a little in her hair.

Naturally, Ange wasn't even the slightest bit fazed. She laughed and kissed him, sticky face and all. The laughter in the audience quickly switched to applause.

"Was that really necessary?" he asked her softly, wiping icing out of his eyes to the best of his ability.

Ange- evidently determined to make his tux completely unreturnable- wiped her face with a corner of his tux jacket. She grinned at him, unapologetic. "When have you ever known me to do anything that wasn't completely necessary?"

Ray laughed. "You're off to a great start with this wife thing, you know," he said. "With the practical jokes and the cake smashing and the tux ruining. You sure you're cut out for this?"

Angie giggled a little, but fixed him with a determined, but surprisingly tender, stare. "Vecchio," she said, "I am going to be the best damn wife you ever had."

Ray believed her.

\-----

_Summer, 2001 - Way Too Much Goddamn Cake_

"That's a lot of cake," Ray said. 

"It seems to be, yes," Stella said, a little feebly. 

"That is really a lot of cake," he said. 

"Yeah." She rubbed her forehead, wondering if it'd look less frightening if she didn't stare directly at it. 

"I don't think I've ever seen that much cake," Ray said. "At least, y'know, not at somebody's _house._ In a bakery, maybe." 

"Yes, Ray, there is a veritable cornucopia of infinite cake on my dining table, I think it's been established." Stella leaned forward to brace herself with a chair, now wondering if maybe if she looked at it long enough, it'd start to look smaller just from survival adaptation. It was worth a try, anyway. 

"How are we supposed to eat all this?" Ray asked. He braced himself with the chair next to hers, and Stella felt an overwhelming sense of kinship with her future husband. At least this whole thing was as terrifying for him as it was for her. 

The petit four orgy currently splayed across the table hadn't been either of their ideas. When they had announced their engagement a year ago, the plan at the time had been to have a very quick, very quiet ceremony before a Justice of the Peace in the courthouse, with a reception to follow that was supposed to just be close friends and immediate family. The first thing that had gone wrong with that plan was that Ray had wanted to wait until Constable Fraser got back from whatever expedition it was he was going on in Canada (with her ex-husband- not that Stella was commenting on that) so that he could be there when they married, and at the time, they hadn't had any idea when he was coming back. This had put their wedding on an indefinite hold until such time as a Mountie and her ex-husband could be reached in the arctic wilderness to be asked when they thought they'd be making it back to the Illinois area. 

Which meant their engagement had started to stretch out long enough for their friends and families to start suggesting that, since they had time, maybe they should do something a little more than a courthouse and a small afterparty. 

And suggest it very strongly. 

Several times. 

Somewhere between the caving in to the idea (after all, maybe it would be nice to have a full wedding ceremony that more people could come to) and roughly four months ago (they didn't really know that much about wedding planning, after all- neither of them had been extensively involved in planning their previous weddings, it had mostly been handled by their respective mothers; perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad idea to ask for some help), their loved ones had steadily turned all their plans on their heads. It was now less like the small, quiet second wedding of a pair of middle-aged law enforcement retirees (retirement pending in Stella's case) and more like the premiere royal wedding of celebrity monarchs from some small European country. 

Or so it seemed to Ray and Stella, anyway. They had been informed several times that theirs was still a small wedding. Small in this case being a relative term that meant fewer than a hundred people were coming and the budget was less than thirty thousand dollars. 

And now they had cake. By Stella's count, fifty pieces of twenty-five cake samples, because apparently twenty-five different flavors of potential wedding cake existed, and she and Ray were supposed to try them all and approve one. 

"I think I'm going into hyperglycemic shock just looking at it," Stella said. 

"You? What about me? I got a family history of diabetes," Ray said. It was hard at the moment for Stella to tell if he was joking. 

"What did we get ourselves into?" she asked, the sentence dissolving into a weak laugh somewhere halfway through. 

"Cake, apparently," Ray said, and he was letting out the same kind of strangled laugh. "Sure, we're running out of money, and space, and a moment's peace, but we got cake." 

Stella giggled a little and dropped her head against his shoulder. "Maybe we should give them to your nieces and nephews," she said. "Let them pick one out." 

"We should give it to them and pick the one that survives," Ray said. "Otherwise we'll have nine kids running around knocking everything over." 

"Last Cake Standing," Stella said, trying to keep a straight face. "An elimination challenge to the death to find the champion dessert." 

"It could work," Ray said, rubbing his hand up and down her back. 

"It could, but I think your sisters would kill us," she said. 

"Yeah, but if they kill us, we don't have to eat all of these," Ray said. "Win-win." 

Stella laughed. "You have a very perverse definition of winning," she said, wrapping her arms around his neck so that she could kiss him. 

He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her back. He drew his head back and gave her a very tired smile. "You think maybe this whole thing has gotten a little insane?" 

"Yes," she said without hesitation. "Completely. And it's become the opposite of everything we wanted when we first discussed this." 

"Yeah," he said, making a face. "But, hey. Two months to go, then it's gonna be just you, me, and a beach. Warm sand, blue water, all that stuff. And did I mention the just you and me part?" 

Stella moaned a little at the thought. "Can't we make that part happen now?" She trailed her hand along his side until it sat firmly on his belt. 

Ray hissed out a breath. "Eat cake tomorrow?" he asked. 

"Yes, please," she said, and pulled him towards her bedroom.

* * *

**Four Fights**

* * *

_Fall, 1987- On issues with punctuality_

"I just don't get it," Ray said. "How long can it take to put on make-up?" 

Stella poked herself in the eye with the liner pencil again and barely resisted the urge to growl at him. "A lot longer if you keep distracting me!" 

Ray managed to keep quiet exactly long enough for her to finish her eyeliner. Once she put it down to pick up the mascara wand, he was back at it again. "Why didn't you do this earlier?" he asked. 

"Because I was _working_ earlier," Stella said, for what felt like the hundredth time. "Working in the state attorney's office isn't a nine to five job, Ray! I'm sorry!" 

Ray was starting to do an agitated pace around the bathroom. His tux was rumpled, and his bowtie hung around his neck unknotted, waiting for her to come tie it. She wished he would learn to do it himself. They didn't have time for him to depend on her to get him ready to go places. Especially not now, when they were supposed to have gotten out the door twenty minutes ago. 

"What I really don't get," Ray said, affecting an air that he wasn't so much talking to her as addressing an invisible third person somewhere else in their bathroom, "is how it is that every time I make us late for something, you have a complete cow, but the one time you make us late for something, somehow, it's still my fault." 

"I never said it was your fault," Stella cried. "I said I was working and that's why I'm not ready to go! How did you read that as me thinking this is your fault?" 

"You keep yelling at me about the working," Ray said, "like I'm the reason you have to have a job." 

Stella ground her teeth together and tried to force her hands to work slower with the mascara. She had come dangerously close to getting it on her eyelid, and being on time wasn't actually a higher priority for her than not looking like a raccoon. "Any time you want to go wandering around the garment district trying to serve a subpoena," Stella said, "absolutely _any time_ , Ray, you got it. You can do that and _I'll_ go to the police academy. How does that sound to you? Does that sound reasonable?" 

Ray's lips pursed like he had bitten into something sour. "I knew you were thinking that!" 

"I wasn't until you said it," she said. "But you know, you're right. Right now, one of us has to go to work, and one of us has to go to school, and as the one who has to work, it'd be a hell of a lot nicer if you didn't get on my case about doing my job!" 

"Not once," Ray said, "not _one freaking time_ did I give you any crap about it when I was the one working and you were the one going to school!" 

"I'm not giving you crap about me working," she said. "I'm angry that _you're_ giving _me_ crap about getting to _your_ friend's wedding on time when the only reason we're running behind is that I was working. It _happens,_ Ray. It's not a catastrophic disaster!" 

"Easy for you to say," Ray snapped. "This whole thing isn't riding on you!" 

Stella scoffed. "I'm pretty sure that the wedding is riding on Sam and Sarah and their minister, Ray." 

Ray ran his hands through his hair like he was considering tearing it out by the roots. "I'm the best man, Stella!" He pulled the box with the rings in it out of his pocket and brandished it at her like an unbeatable straight flush. "Remember? It's not like if I'm late, they can start without me! It's not gonna get very far if they don't have the damn rings!" 

"I'm not going to get very far if you keep _yelling at me!_ " she shouted. 

Ray glared at her, but said nothing. 

Stella clenched her teeth and started uncapping her lipstick. "Zip me up," she said. She presented her back to him while she put lipstick on. 

He drew the zipper up her back, and she could actually feel his hands trembling as he did it. He really was furious with her. 

Problem being, right now, Stella was so furious with him, she didn't care. 

Stella hadn't even wanted to go to this wedding in the first place. Didn't she have enough on her plate with a case load that was taller than she was piling up on her desk? Wasn't the humiliation of not even getting to try cases, but running around like an errand girl for the _real_ lawyers, bad enough? All she wanted to do at the end of her workdays was kick back with some wine, maybe a cigarette- if Ray could prevent himself from scowling about it for thirty Goddamn seconds because she hadn't given up bad habits just for the _discussion_ on whether or not they'd try for a baby. 

And now here he was screaming at her because he had committed her to something she didn't even want to do, didn't even have _time_ to do, and she was trying to do it right. Stella was sure that Sarah wouldn't have appreciated Stella showing up to her wedding in her wrinkled suit and run stockings with her makeup worn off and her hair coming down. Did Ray not get that? 

She put the cap back on the lipstick, tossed it angrily into the drawer with the rest of her cosmetics, slammed the drawer shut, and grabbed a square of toilet paper from beside the sink. Stella watched him in the mirror while she blotted her lipstick. Ray looked as if he wanted to explode at her until she cracked. Almost as disturbing was her own expression when she caught it after tossing the toilet paper aside. She looked both smug and angry, as if daring him to criticize how slowly she had worked when she was done already. 

A muscle in Ray's jaw went as he clenched his teeth. "Fix my tie," he said. 

Stella turned around and began tying it with a violence that could strangle him if she wasn't careful. 

"If Sam gives me a bunch of crap about being late, I'm blaming you," Ray said. 

"If Sarah gives me any nasty looks because my makeup's less than perfect in her pictures, I'm telling her it's your fault," she said. 

"Great," Ray said. "So we're both assholes." 

"Seems that way," Stella said. 

"Fine." 

"Good."

It was always like this when they fought. Neither of them seemed to be even the tiniest bit capable of backing down when they felt themselves the injured party. Once it got to the point where they were snapping at each other- not even making arguments anymore, just slinging insults for the sake of not losing- they had dug their heels in too far to get back out. The argument was going to live with them for a week until other things distracted them and they'd forgotten they'd had it. Irrational escalation of commitment was supposed to be for things you were enjoying, but she and Ray did it with relish when it came to arguing, effectively marrying their own sides of the dispute and refusing to ever let it go. 

It was a repeating pattern, and Stella knew, in calmer moments, it couldn't possibly be good for them. She also knew that it wasn't what she had signed on for when she and Ray had gotten married. Trouble was, she didn't know what to do to fix it. 

"I'm sleeping on the couch tonight," Ray said. "Give you a chance to clear your head." 

"A night alone will probably do you wonders," she said. "Let's go." 

\-----

_Spring, 1990 - On familial etiquette on special occasions_

"You know, Ray," Angie said, shaking her head at him like he was a troublesome kid making her life more difficult on purpose, "it's gonna ruin all of your sister's wedding pictures if you're gonna make that face the whole time." 

"What are you talking about?" Ray asked, and he regretted that it came out more like a snarl than a question. "What face? There's no face." 

Angie snorted. "That face," she said. "That one you're making right now. The one that says, 'I am going to kill the asshole who's marrying my sister and make it look like an accident.' It's really not in the spirit of weddings, Vecchio." 

Ray let out a snort of his own and went back to straightening his tie. "Dunno what you're talking about," he said. "I'm not thinking anything like that. Not that I'd cry if Dante happened to step off the curb in front of a bus or anything, but I am not planning to make him disappear." 

"I'm not saying you _are_ planning to make him disappear," Angie said. "I'm saying you _look_ like you're planning to make him disappear. And that's not how you want to look at Frannie's wedding. _That's_ all I'm saying." 

Ray made a face at her. "Maybe I don't care about how I look at her wedding," he said. "Ever think of that?" 

Angie heaved an impatient sigh. "You should care," she said. "It's your sister's wedding--" 

"Yeah, to a useless, no-good goomba who's already run off on her three times--" 

Angie pitched her voice louder to talk over him. "--and it's important to her, and you should be nice to her today because you love her." 

"Certainly more than that skunk she's marrying does," Ray muttered. 

"Ray, come on," Angie said. "It's her life." 

"And she's throwing it away," he said. "Come on, do you really approve of this?" 

"It's not my job to approve of anything she does," she said. "And it ain't your job, either. No matter what your mother thinks." 

"What is that supposed to mean?" Ray asked. 

Angie looked taken aback, as if she hadn't expected him to ask about any shots she made against his mother. "Nothing," she said. 

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Nothing?" 

"Yeah, nothing," she said. "Will you quit snapping over everything I say? It's not like it's _my_ fault Frannie's getting married." 

"You sure didn't try to talk her out of it," he reminded her. "Or do you not remember being Mrs. Oh, Congratulations, Good For You?" 

Angie stuck her hands on her hips. Ray had the sense that he was wandering into dangerous territory, but it seemed a bit late at this point to take it back, so he stared her down. Angie drew a breath in through her nose- loud, long, and slow, like she was trying to sniff up all the patience in the room. "Have you ever- and I do mean _ever,_ babe- tried to talk anybody in your family out of anything? Can't be done. It just makes you dig your heels in deeper. You and Frannie are the worst ones, and I should know." 

"So what, that's it, you just give her your blessing?" Ray demanded. "Whose side are you on?" 

"Since when is it an issue of sides?" Angie asked, laughing like he was nuts or she was going nuts or maybe they were both nuts and there wasn't anything else she could do. "And, by the way, when _did_ this become my fault?" 

"I never said it was your fault," Ray said. 

"Really? 'Cause you're sure as hell acting like it is. What the hell is your problem?" 

"My problem?" Ray asked. "What, I need another problem besides the one my baby sister's marrying?" 

"Yes, you do, because in case you haven't noticed, that one isn't your problem," Angie said. "Jesus, Ray, it's her life, it's not any of your business. She knows you disapprove! Everybody knows you disapprove! You made your case and you lost! Now it's time to grit your teeth, put on a smile, and hope it all turns out for the best. There's nothing else you can do!" 

"In case _you_ haven't noticed, Ange, I don't _like_ that there's nothing else I can do!" Ray said. "Can you get that? Can you maybe swing a little sympathy this way?" 

"No," she said flatly. "Because you're acting like a world class asshole. Congratulations, you stuck the landing. You've got the gold medal. You want to go for the world record?" 

"I want to not have to _smile_ in the pictures," Ray said. "I don't want there to be any damn pictures. I don't want there to be any damn wedding. And as long as I'm wishing for the impossible, I want _my wife_ to understand that!" 

The color drained from Angie's face so fast, Ray almost looked down at her feet to see if all her blood had puddled there. Her next words came out both softer and angrier than they had in this entire conversation. "This is still about your father," she said. 

Ray guessed that Angie's color had gone via psychic transfusion, because now he could feel a lot more blood than he could even have boiling along his face. "Do not bring him into this," he said. 

"Why not?" she asked. "It's true, isn't it? You've been impossible since he died- especially to Frannie. You can't step up and be her dad, Ray. It's not gonna help her, and it's not gonna make you feel any better about not fixing things with him before he was gone." 

"I don't care about fixing things with Pop," Ray said. "And I don't want to be her dad." 

"Oh, that isn't why we moved into this house?" Angie asked, spreading her arms out to indicate their bedroom. "That's not why you're paying all the bills, and running all your mother's errands, and growling like a bloodhound every time anybody doesn't do something your way?" 

Ray hated this. He hated it whenever she looked for the problems behind the problems, the things in the back of his head that he never wanted anybody to hear or say. He hated it that she just couldn't leave well enough alone when he was pissed about something, that she just _had_ to find the "real reason" anybody did anything. It was the worst part about being married to another cop. 

He took a breath of his own, hoping that maybe there really was a little whiff of patience left in the air, because he was all out. "I'm not getting into this with you," he said. "And you know what else? I'm not going through all this--" He started tearing off his tie. "--with her." 

"Fine," Angie said. "Fine. Don't go. Stay here and mope." 

"I am not moping!" Ray shouted. 

"I'll make excuses for you," she said, as if he hadn't said anything. "Maybe by the time we get back, you'll be acting like a person again." 

"Screw you," Ray said. 

Angie's face was livid, but cold. "Not any time soon," she said. "I'll see you later." 

Then she turned around and walked out the door. 

\-----

_Summer, 2001 - On how the more things change, the more they stay the same_

Stella stepped onto her balcony, set the plastic grocery bag down by the door, and sank down to the stonework. It was amazing how stifling and claustrophobic her apartment had become. 

There were invitations everywhere on her kitchen table- over fifty of them, all needing to be signed, stuffed, licked, stamped, and addressed. Her refrigerator was still filled with cake samples, mostly the bits that she and Ray hadn't liked and hadn't felt like finishing. There was a book full of trousseau patterns on her sofa, and she couldn't even remember what a trousseau was. 

Marriage, she'd agreed to. Weddings, as it turned out, were a bit too much. 

Why was she doing this, she wondered, and who was she even doing this for? She and Ray didn't need this much fuss; neither of them were into the spectacle, and everything involved in making it happen felt like back-breaking work. And this was supposed to be a _small_ wedding! Stella only vaguely remembered from her childhood how big weddings were supposed to go, and the thought of having one didn't make her feel like a princess; it made her feel like hyperventilating. 

She almost felt like hyperventilating, anyway. Her apartment was a one-stop bridal boutique with stations for every part of the process. If she lived in a bigger space, she could be recouping a fair portion of the cost of all this by selling tickets. 

Stella looked at the grocery bag by her hip, and supposed that was probably what had brought her to this. She took a pack of cigarettes from the bag and began packing them against her thigh. 

While officially, she had quit smoking about six years ago, towards the end of her first marriage, her unofficial record was a little more spotty. She'd had a few slips at parties since then, and she had a habit of indulging whenever things got stressful- including for an entire month a few years back during the Kuzma trial, since the little bastard felt the need to stare at her for every cross-examination. 

She tore the plastic and foil seals off the pack and thought it was probably a bad sign that planning a wedding got to her almost as much as prosecuting a psychopath. 

Stella lit the first one and inhaled, sinking bonelessly against the wall with a groan. 

She had gotten a whole three drags in when the balcony door slid open, and did something she hadn't done since she was nineteen: she rolled the cigarette up in her tongue and clamped her jaws shut with it inside her mouth. 

"Hey, you," Ray said, looking down at her. 

Stella hummed a greeting back. 

"Unwinding?" he asked. 

She hummed another affirmative, nodding. Christ, she forgot how much it sucked to do this; smoke was rolling up her sinuses from the back of her throat and it was taking everything she had not to cough or sneeze. 

Ray laughed a little and raised his eyebrows at her. "What, are you too tired to talk?" 

She shrugged. Her eyes were starting to tear and she wished, desperately, that he would go inside so that she could spit this thing out. Why, God, why did her fiancé have to have a key? 

Suddenly, Ray's brow furrowed and he looked at her a little more closely. Stella gave him the most innocent smile she could when she had her mouth full and half-suspected that smoke was going up her Eustachian tubes and coming out her ears. Ray sniffed her. 

"You smoking?" he asked. 

Stella shook her head. 

Ray's frown deepened. "I'll give you five hundred dollars to whistle right now." 

She looked at him askance, narrowing her eyes, trying to convey that to whistle on command for five hundred dollars was simply beneath her dignity, and not at all something she was presently incapable of doing. 

"Stella?" he asked. 

She sighed, opened her mouth, and unrolled her tongue so that the wet, crumpled, but miraculously still burning, cigarette fell out of her mouth and landed on the floor. 

Ray pulled a disgusted face. "Jesus, Stella, what is that? Why would you do that?" 

"I didn't want you to throw a fit about it," she said, picking up the cigarette and stubbing it out on the ground before dropping it in the glass ashtray she had hidden in a potted plant. 

Ray looked from the ashtray to her and back as if he was somehow being conned. "What fit? Who's throwing a fit?" He gave her an incredulous look. "Since when do you smoke?" 

"Since I was about sixteen, I think," she said. 

"And I'm just finding out about this _now?"_ Ray asked. 

"I'm not really smoking _still,_ " she said. "I'm smoking _again._ I stopped for a very long time." 

"How long of a time?" he asked. 

"Six years ago," she said. Honesty forced her to amend, "It's been almost three years since I cheated at it." 

"Cheated?!" He echoed, his voice taking on a high, disbelieving quality. 

"Well, what would you prefer to call it?" she asked. 

"Something you don't do?" Ray suggested. "Or at least something you don't pretend you don't do when you are!" 

Stella groaned. "Ray, come on, it's just a slip. I'm under a lot of pressure. Something had to give." 

"That something being a three-year quitting smoking streak that I didn't even know you had," he said, looking a little betrayed. 

"I don't want to fight about this," she said. "I hate fighting about this. Ray and I--" As usual when she was forced to refer to her ex-husband in her future husband's presence, the name tripped her. "I mean, the other Ray- my last Ray--" 

"Kowalski," he supplied. 

"Fine. _Kowalski_ and I used to fight about this, and I don't particularly want to go down this avenue of Memory Lane when we're about to get married," she said. 

"Didn't he used to--" 

"He quit before I did. It was part of the baby fight we used to have. Can we please be having any conversation but this one?" she asked. 

"When was the last slip?" Ray wanted to know. 

Stella rubbed at her temples. "What?" 

"When did you last _cheat_ at quitting?" he asked. "What, exactly, induces you to cheat?" 

Stella gave him a withering look. "Don't interrogate me, please." 

"I'm not interrogating- who's interrogating? I'm asking you a question," he said. "What's bringing this up now?" 

She buried her face in her palm. "I don't know," she said, "it's just something that happens sometimes when I'm under a lot of stress. I told you." 

"This wedding is tripping you out so much that you're relapsing on your balcony?" 

Stella raked her nails through her hair and fixed him with a look. "What if I say yes?" she asked. "Are you going to call this off because I had a cigarette?" 

Ray jerked back, surprised. "What? No!" His face turned quickly to suspicious. "Why? Do you want me to?" 

"No!" she cried. "Of course not!" She stood up and felt herself starting to pace. 

"Then why would you say that?" Ray asked, standing up, too, his head weaving so he could try to maintain eye contact with her. 

Stella threw her hands up. "Because, logically, there's nothing else we can do about the wedding stress! The wedding is happening, the planning is stressful, and that's not going to change! That's just the way it is!" 

Ray shook his head, face screwed up with anger. "You're scaring me right now, you know that? You really are." 

Stella let out an incredulous laugh. "Why? Because I had a cigarette?" 

"No, because you actually tossed out the sentence _call this off_ because I caught you having a cigarette!" Ray spread his hands out helplessly. "What the hell was I supposed to feel about that, Stella?" 

"You could consider thinking that maybe this is hard for me!" she cried. "I'm- I'm _tired_ of it, Ray. I'm tired of scouting locations and eating petit fours that all start to taste the same after you've had _five,_ and picking out colors and flowers and patterns and- you know what? I don't want to spend three thousand dollars on a custom-made wedding dress! I want to spend fifty dollars on something off the rack that probably a thousand other women are wearing, and I don't want everybody to look at me like I'm crazy for saying that!" 

Ray stared at her as though she'd grown another head. "So do that! What's stopping you? Who says you have to do any of that crap?" 

"Everyone!" she snapped. "Your family, my friends, everybody who wants to come to this horror show to watch me make a spectacle of myself and pay out the nose for the privilege of letting them do it! Because that's what _normal_ brides do, that's what _normal_ women want, and I just haven't ever been normal in that way." 

Ray gave her a look of burgeoning understanding. "Is that what this is about? You never drinking the average woman Kool-Aid? I don't care that you never wanted kids, and I _really_ don't care if you spend less than a hundred bucks on a wedding dress." 

Stella cupped her hands on the back of her neck and squeezed at the muscle tension that was building up there. "Yeah, well," she said, "a lot of people have." 

Ray looked at her for what seemed like a very long time. Stella could feel heat suffusing her face as the old humiliation crawled all around her skin, that painful, decades-old sense that could still creep up on her even when she had to do something as objectively ridiculous as pick out a couple flowers. _I'm supposed to want this. Why don't I?_

Suddenly, she could feel Ray's arms wrapping around her back, drawing her close to his chest. 

"Hey," he said, just above a whisper. "I'm sorry." 

Every muscle in her body seemed to unclench at once and she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing her face into his shoulder. "I'm sorry, too," she said. "About the yelling- and I guess the cigarettes." 

He laughed a little. "Smoke 'em if you got 'em, I don't care." He lifted her head away from his shoulder so that he could cup her face in his hands and look her in the eye. "I love you," he said. "I love _you_ , okay? Not some other Stella you mighta been if you'd turned out different. I love this. I love us." 

Stella could feel her eyes tearing again, and tried to smile. "I love you, too," she sighed. "I do love us. I just... don't love all- that." She gestured in the general direction of her apartment and all of the wedding junk that currently cluttered it. 

"Me, either," he said. "It's kinda late to undo it now, but would it be out of line for me to suggest that maybe we'll get through it okay?" 

She laughed. "No," she said. She pulled him close again. "You think we will?" 

"Apparently with enough nicotine," he said. 

Stella laughed again and gave him a shove. "You sure we can't just run off to Vegas?" 

"I'd really rather not set foot in Vegas ever again, if it's all the same to you," he said. 

Stella winced. "Sorry," she said. 

"Eh." Ray shrugged. "Don't worry about it." He kissed her forehead. "You wanna have one of those properly now?" 

"God, please," she said. 

Ray laughed a little and sat down on the balcony floor. Stella sat next to him and took the pack when he held it out to her, pulling one from it and lighting it again. She sank back against Ray after the first drag and he rubbed his hand up and down her arm. 

"Tell me something," he said. 

"What?" she asked. 

"That hiding the cigarette in your mouth thing," Ray said. "Did Kowalski teach you that?" 

Stella chuckled. "Yeah," she admitted. 

Ray rolled his eyes and shook his head. "It figures." 

\-----

_Summer, 2001- On not getting between elderly Catholic women when they think they're right_

Ray didn't think he had ever seen anything like it before. 

When they'd all arrived at his house about an hour ago, both his mother and Mrs. Kowalski- brought in as what passed for Stella's side of the family these days, since she didn't have any- had seemed like they'd get along like a house on fire. You had to think they would; they were two little old Catholic ladies of a similar age who'd both dragged up a couple kids in the poorer Chicago neighborhoods in the seventies. Sure, his mother was as Italian as it was possible to get, while Barbara Kowalski was Polack through and through, but at the start of the evening, he'd been sure they'd be able to overlook it. 

The trouble with a house on fire, though, was that it involved a lot of running and screaming. And that, it seemed, they had covered. 

"Blue is not a wedding color!" his mother yelled, shaking her hands at Mrs. Kowalski like she wanted to be shaking her by the shoulders. "Not for wedding dresses! Not for wedding flowers! _White!_ " 

Mrs. Kowalski made a weird sound somewhere between a groan and a growl, like it was taking everything she had not to start beating the other woman with her own rosary. "Stella's been married before! White's not an appropriate color for a second wedding! And blue's her favorite- ask her!" She whipped her head in Stella's direction. "Isn't it, honey?" 

Stella, who had been sitting on the couch like Jacques Cousteau in the shark cage- safe as long as she stayed out of the way- looked horrified at being called to voice an opinion on something that mattered way more to her future and former mothers-in-law than it did to her. "Um." 

"You see? She don't like it!" His mother said, looking smug. 

Mrs. Kowalski made the noise again. "What she doesn't like is you getting all in her face about it!" 

"I am _not_ in her _face_ ," Ma said, looking mortified that she'd even suggest such a thing. "She doesn't like! She don't want everybody thinking she been married before!" She jabbed her finger at Mrs. Kowalski's chest. " _You_ just want everybody to know she used to be married to your son!" 

"Everybody already knows she was married to my son!" Mrs. Kowalski's voice had gone as high and squeaky as her face was red. "That's why it's gonna look silly if she goes down the aisle in white!" 

Ma tutted and squared her shoulders- a move Ray knew of old that meant she was about to bring out the big guns. "You just want everybody know you were the mama-in-law before! _You_ want to be the only one!" 

Mrs. Kowalski looked affronted. "I've known Stella since she was twelve years old," she snapped. "A white dress isn't going to make me disappear, you know!" 

To Ray's horror, his mother turned the squared shoulders on him. "You see, Raimundo? She admits it! She _want_ Stella to like her better than me!" 

Ray could feel his mouth opening and closing wordlessly as he tried to figure out what to say that wouldn't get him killed by one of the two of them. He looked to Stella and tried to communicate with his eyes, _Help me!_

Stella held her hands out helplessly, biting her lip and widening her eyes so she looked as panicked as he felt. 

Great. No support from that corner. Ray ran his hands up the sides of his face and closed his eyes tight, wishing he was anywhere else but here right now. "Uh- I- uh--" 

Mrs. Kowalski came to his rescue. Sort of. "I said no such thing! Don't try to turn this on me! You're the one trying to shut me out like I haven't been here for the last thirty years!" 

"Twenty-seven, actually," Stella muttered, and Ray wondered if she actually thought precise math would restore some kind of sanity to this situation. They were way past anything addition and subtraction could fix. 

Mrs. Kowalski glared over her shoulder in Stella's direction, like she was a traitor to the faith. "You hush!" 

Stella made an exaggerated zipping her lips and throwing away the key gesture. Ray tried to hide a laugh in a cough. 

Big mistake. His mother turned on him with a glare identical to Mrs. Kowalski's. "This is _not funny!_ " 

Ray put his hands up quickly in surrender. Ma gave him a fierce head nod, which he read along the lines of _Ha, so there._

Ma turned back to Mrs. Kowalski and crossed her arms over her chest, rolling onto the forward balls of her feet so she looked a little taller and- to Ray, at least- more intimidating. "She's my daughter-in-law, too! You don't pick out everything like you in charge here!" 

Mrs. Kowalski dropped her arms to her sides like she was trying to punch the air right next to her instead of a person, and raised herself to her full height- which was a little taller than his mother. "That's the pot calling the kettle black if I ever heard it!" 

Ray's mother threw her hands up in the air and yelled something in Italian that sounded- it was hard to make out when it was coming that loud and that fast- like it meant, "This woman is impossible, I can't be having with this in my own house!" 

Stella let out a helpless, groaning whine. "Mama, please, calm down- I don't really care that much what color my dress is." 

Mrs. Kowalski gave Stella a shocked look. "Don't go backing down just because somebody's getting het up- she'll walk all over you once you're married!" 

"I would _never!_ " Ma shouted. "I never treat Stella any different from one of my own! Do I, Raimundo?" 

Ray rolled his head back towards the ceiling. _Why me,_ he thought. He sighed and looked back at his mother. "No, Ma, you don't- but you know, treating her like one of your own _does_ mean walking all over her, when it's you." 

Stella buried her face in her palm. "Thanks, honey." 

Ma gave him a look of such ferocity that Ray half felt like she was going to be writing him out of her will the second he left the house. She wagged her finger at him. "You ungrateful boy! I am ashamed you would talk to me like that- and in front of _people_!" 

"My son would never talk to me like that," Mrs. Kowalski said, and while ordinarily, Ray would have been pretty annoyed at being compared unfavorably to Kowalski, he got the feeling that the blow was actually aimed at his mother and the fact that she gave her kids opportunity to talk to her like that. 

Ma took it in stride and twisted it to insult both him and Mrs. Kowalski at the same time. "Yes, your son is very good boy- don't know how he manage it growing up with you!" 

"Why, you--" Mrs. Kowalski began. 

Ray whistled as loud as he possibly could, so all three heads turned towards him at once. "Okay, okay- that's it- time out. Everybody's gonna take a little cool-off break now, and we'll maybe get back to talking about colors when nobody's turning any! Sound good?" 

Both mothers huffed in unison. 

"I go check on the polenta," his mother muttered darkly, stalking towards the kitchen. Mrs. Kowalski scowled at her back and threw her hands up before plopping onto the sofa and folding her arms across her chest like she was planning to launch a silent treatment assault. 

Stella gave Mrs. Kowalski an awkward, reluctant look before she moved to Ray's side and whispered, "This is going really badly." 

Ray let out a _ha_ of disbelief. "You think I didn't notice that?" 

"Well, can we try to smooth it over?" Stella asked, giving him a pleading look. "Please?" 

Ray let out a heavy sigh. He didn't really get why Stella was still this tight with her ex's mother. Ray had stopped speaking to Angie's parents approximately twenty minutes after the first Christmas together and had not gotten back into the habit any time since. But, for whatever alien logic reason, it was important to Stella that Mrs. Kowalski continue being part of her life and her family from here on out, and that was gonna be a lot harder if she and his mother couldn't be kept from leaping at each other's throats, so Ray gave in and decided to try. 

"Fine," Ray said. "We'll work it out, okay? We'll talk to 'em and see if we can't get 'em talking civilly. Sound good?" 

Stella nodded. "You take your mother, I'll take Barbara?" 

Ray snorted. "Oh, sure, pick the easy one." 

Stella gave him a weak smile and a kiss. "I love you," she said. 

Ray stopped her from moving away so he could kiss her properly. "You owe me," he said when they broke apart. 

Stella grinned at him over her shoulder. "Put it on my tab." 

Ray chuckled, then sighed, shook his head, and headed for the kitchen. His mother was examining the polenta like she was trying to find the secrets of the universe in its surface. 

"Hey," he said. "You see yourself calming down and talking like reasonable adults any time soon, Ma?" 

His mother gave an injured sniff. "I was perfectly calm," she said, "'til that woman say those things about me." 

Ray gave a faint, sarcastic laugh. "Yeah, I can see that," he said. "Come on, Ma- can't you try to get along with her, at least until we got this thing in the bag? For Stella's sake, at least?" 

"Why don't her own real parents come help?" Ma asked, sending a downright poisonous glare in Barbara Kowalski's direction. 

"Well, because her parents are dead, Ma," Ray said. "I'm sure they're as put out about it as you are." 

"Hmmph," Ma sniffed again, as if she thought Stella's parents' deaths were something they had done on purpose so that she would be left to deal with Mrs. Kowalski. 

Ray groaned and leaned on the counter so he could try to look his mother in the eye. "Ma," he said, "please? Look, she might not be her real mother, but she's the closest thing that Stella's got now. She is, for all intents and purposes, my future mother-in-law, and that means that I am gonna be spending the rest of _my_ life with her, too. You really like white that much, you gotta make that this much harder?" 

Ma pursed her lips. She looked like she was being very forced to swallow a very bitter pill. "I don't like how she hangs on that girl," she said. "She gonna be my family, too. Why does _she_ get to be the one she calls mama and listens to all the time?" 

Ray laughed weakly. "Probably because of that whole been with her since she was twelve thing," he said. "She practically brought Stella up, too, just as much as Kowalski. Which you been told already like a dozen times." 

Ma's lips pursed again. "Why Stella doesn't like me?" she asked. 

"She does!" Ray protested. "She likes you fine!" 

"Not as much as her old mama-in-law," she said. 

"She hasn't known you since she was twelve," Ray said. "Give her more time, she'll like you as much." He leaned on his elbow and gave his mother his most persuasive look. "And you know what would be a real big help for making that happen? Making nice with the lady who is her proxy mom in all this stuff. Do you think you can do that?" 

Ma hesitated for a moment, then glanced around the kitchen door to where Barbara and Stella were in deep conversation. While Ray couldn't hear what they were saying- and he was sure Ma couldn't, either- it looked like Stella wasn't especially pleased with Barbara and was telling her so in no uncertain terms. Ma set her jaw in a grimly satisfied way and turned back to Ray. "Okay," she said. "Okay, I be nice to the crazy lady." 

Ray laughed. "Maybe don't call her that?" 

Ma rolled her eyes. "Fine, fine," she said. 

"Thanks," Ray said. He straightened up and kissed his mother's forehead. "Sorry if I pissed you off back there." 

Ma wagged her finger at him again, though less angrily this time. "You watch your language," she said. 

"Yeah, okay," he said. "Still." 

His mother nodded, looking satisfied again. Her expression softened a little and she patted his cheek. "You _are_ a good boy, Raimundo." 

"Heh. Thanks, Ma, I try," he said. 

His mother squared her shoulders again, this time like a soldier going out to do battle. The mission was, hopefully, to kill Barbara Kowalski with kindness. She picked up the polenta and began walking back to the other two while Ray followed. 

When they reached the living room, Mrs. Kowalski was standing up and looking much the same. "I wanted to apologize," she said, "for upsetting you." 

Ma looked back at her and slowly, painfully, gave a little shrug. "Sorry, too," she said. 

Mrs. Kowalski glanced over her shoulder at Stella, who was nodding encouragingly. She turned back to his mother and said, "Forgiven. I hope you forgive me, too." 

"I do," Ma said. She looked for a moment as though she was having an internal struggle, then got out grudgingly, "Blue would be a very- very pretty color on her. Go with her eyes." 

Mrs. Kowalski looked a little surprised. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, it would. Thanks." 

"You welcome," Ma said. 

For a moment, no one said anything. The room felt unsteady, like it was still rocking from all the shouting and hadn't settled back down again yet. 

Stella was the first one to try and test it. "Well," she said, "that's- that's great, then, that we've got that settled." 

Ray watched both of the older women, waiting to see if they could keep it up for more than thirty seconds. 

His mother took a deep breath and made what was, for her, an Olympic level try. "How about we eat this now?" 

Mrs. Kowalski took the olive branch. "That'd be nice. I love polenta. I haven't had it in a real long time." 

"I get you a plate," Ma said. "Our family's polenta is the best." 

"It smells like it," Mrs. Kowalski said, offering her a tentative smile. Ma returned it. 

Ray helped his mother get the plates and serve everybody, who seemed, at the moment, to be willing to be swayed by the power of really good food. Ray decided to take it as a good way to get back down to business. 

"Now that's all over," he said between bites, "do you think we can all talk about a menu?"

* * *

**Three Moments of Panic**

* * *

_Summer, 2001 - Mating Rituals of the Eastern Caribou_

Ray didn't know what braindead part of him had decided to have his bachelor party in Huey and Dewey's club, but he felt a very strong urge to find it and kill it before it spread. 

It wasn't that the One-Liner was a terrible place or anything. They'd bought a perfectly good building to set up shop. The AC was running, and the chairs were comfy. Not much to complain about in that arena. Ray couldn't complain about the company, either- everybody from the 2-7, even Welsh, had come out to wish him well, even though he hadn't worked there in (Vegas included) almost four years. Laurie was here, even though he hadn't seen _her_ since Carver's parole, and hadn't been talking to her much before that. Kowalski had declined (probably hoping to avoid the awkwardness of being at a party whose purpose underscored very clearly that they were Stella's Ray #1, and Stella's Ray #2), but Fraser- Fraser had shown up. Everybody Ray had ever cared about, minus his bride-to-be and a couple exes, was with him, and that was everything he could have ever hoped for. 

But c'mon, seriously, how many possible spelling jokes and fish puns could two guys make? And who had convinced him that that was just the entertainment that his second send-off into married life needed? 

At least everybody else was laughing. 

Ray nursed his single bottle of beer at a plodding place that wouldn't prevent him from driving home later, and used it as his prop for approving of whatever joke Dewey made if anybody seemed to be looking. 

The show came to an end ("What do you call a fish with no eyes? _Fsssh._ Thank you, guys, you been great, and let's give up another round of applause for the man of the hour, he's getting married this weekend! Ray Vecchio!") and Ray dutifully held up the bottle in a toasting gesture, smiling as big as he as could. 

"It's wonderful to see their act has improved while I've been away," Fraser said to him as Huey and Dewey hammed their way off their own stage. 

Ray raised his eyebrows at him. "This was an improvement?" 

Fraser was spared from answering him by everybody choosing then to start closing ranks around him. Huey gave him a friendly smile while Dewey gave him a double thumbs-up as they drew closer. 

"So what'd you think?" Huey asked. 

"What else is he gonna think?" Dewey asked him. "We killed it up there tonight!" 

Huey shook his head at his partner and looked at Ray. "Really, what'd you think?" 

Ray laughed. "Truthfully? I think you shouldn'ta quit your day jobs. But thanks, anyway." 

They both laughed at him, like he was joking. 

"I was just telling him how pleased I was to see how your performance has evolved since I last saw it," Fraser said, and oh, that was nice, Fraser being the polite one again, to smooth everything over. There was something he hadn't even realized he'd miss until he didn't have it anymore. 

"Thanks, Fraser," Huey said. 

"Of course," said Fraser. 

Back up on the stage, the microphone was giving a little squeal, and when Ray turned to look, he almost fell out of his chair to see that it was Laurie up there. She had sneaked over when they weren't looking. "Hey, can everybody hear me?" she asked. 

Dewey let out a loud, appreciative whistle to confirm that yes, he could. Huey rolled his eyes and gave him an elbow to the ribs. 

"I don't normally approve of women at bachelor parties," Dewey said to Ray, not quite loud enough for Laurie to hear- at least, so Ray hoped. "But I'll forgive you for the break in tradition for bringing her." 

"Hey, pipe down," Welsh said. "She's got something to say." 

Apparently, they were not quiet enough to escape Laurie's hearing. She laughed. "Thanks, Lieu." 

Welsh gave her the put-upon smile that Ray had forgotten he was so good at. 

Laurie smiled back. "A lot of you don't know me," she said, "I see a lot of faces that probably showed up after I was gone. I was Ray's first partner, back when we were both rookies still wet behind the ears." 

"Hey, you ever get _her_ wet behind the ears?" Dewey asked, waggling his eyebrows. Huey elbowed him again. 

"I wasn't invited to the last bachelor party," Laurie continued, giving Ray a mock-scolding look that somehow still sent a tremor into his stomach, even if she wasn't serious. "But I was around for the last time he got married- engagement, wedding, and all." 

Ray's stomach rolled over again. He tried to keep smiling. 

"I was really surprised to hear that you and Ange didn't make it," Laurie said. "You guys were so crazy about each other. You really seemed to be good at the whole marriage thing." She laughed a little, awkward and nervous. "I guess I missed some stuff." She winked. 

Everybody laughed a little. Ray's stomach had given up on simple rolling in favor of doing the lambada. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he could see Fraser doing a puzzled frown. 

"I don't know Stella any better than I know a lot of you," Laurie said. "But I know from last time that Ray has exquisite taste in women, so I'm sure she's wonderful. So, I'd just like to say, Ray, that I'm really glad you found her. And if you're feeling nervous about going down this road a second time, you used to be a lot better at this than you think- and you probably still are. And maybe the reason that fell apart was that this marriage is the one that was meant to be." 

A lot of eyes were on him now. Ray hoped he was still smiling, because he felt disconnected enough from his body at the moment that he actually couldn't tell. 

"So," Laurie said, doing that awkward smile again, "whether or not you need it- and you probably don't, but just in case- you've got all my prayers and best wishes, including wishing you all the luck in the world." 

Ray could feel a hand clapping on his shoulder that his brain vaguely registered as Welsh while everybody else around was applauding. 

Laurie held up a beer bottle in salute and smiled brightly. "To Ray and Stella," she said. "Knock on wood." 

The clapping resumed, louder than before. 

"I need to get some air," Ray said, and he climbed out of his seat and tried to get to the door really quickly while trying to look like he wasn't going all that quickly. The second he had closed the door behind him, he leaned back against the wall and started taking in great gulps of air. He rested his hands on his knees and hunched over so his head was down by them, too. 

He was starting to get dizzy from the rush of blood to his brain when he heard the door open beside him. 

"Ray?" Fraser asked. "Are you all right?" 

Ray closed his eyes tight. "Tell me a caribou story, Benny." He looked up in time to catch Fraser frowning and confused. 

"Excuse me?" Fraser asked. 

Ray waved one of his hands in a wide, wobbly circle. "C'mon, a caribou story! You got one for every occasion! Help your ex-partner out!" 

"What sort of occasion did you have in mind?" Fraser scratched at his eyebrow, the way he did whenever he felt awkward or worried, and even though it was exactly the same as it had always been, it made Ray feel a little worse. 

"I dunno," Ray said, "stories about caribou getting married for the second time." 

"I see, " Fraser said. He hesitated. "Ray, I'm not sure that the mating rituals of the eastern caribou are going to be much of a help in this situation."

"Why not?" Ray asked, and it came out a lot sharper and more panicky than he'd intended. "You have caribou stories for baby-selling scams, you're telling me you don't got one for this? What do they do?" 

"The males fight to severe injury and sometimes death for the right to mate with multiple females," Fraser said. "It doesn't seem terribly applicable." 

Ray laughed, a little hysterical- for a value of "little" that meant hysterical enough that even he could hear how unhinged he sounded. "Great, I'll try to remember that the next time I see Kowalski." 

"I doubt that's necessary," Fraser said. He reached over and rested his hand on Ray's shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "I'm sure Ms. Zaylor didn't mean to upset you, Ray." 

"So am I," Ray said. "Funny thing, that's not much of a comfort when I'm panicking four days before my wedding because I just got reminded how badly I fucked it up last time!" He jerked himself upright and looked at Fraser. "How the hell am I supposed to do this, Benny?" 

Fraser frowned a little. "Besides that your previous marriage came to an unfortunate and untimely end, do you have any reason to suspect you can't?" 

"I dunno," Ray said. "And you know, that makes it worse? At least if I knew what I did wrong, I could watch out for it. How am I supposed to watch out for something I can't even see?" 

"I don't suppose you can," Fraser admitted. "But if you would like a more positive way to look at the situation, I think you'll find that most people would say that a lack of any obvious signs of wrongdoing would suggest that things are going very well." 

"Oh, well," Ray said, "I can't see the problems, so they're probably not there. That's great." 

"To use an expression more along the lines of your vernacular," Fraser said, "if it isn't broken, don't fix it." 

"It's not like I thought me and Ange were all that broken before we got divorced," Ray said. "it creeps up on you! Just one thing goes wrong, and then another thing goes wrong, and pretty soon, you're not talking to each other without the presence of a mediator trying to figure out who's got a more legit claim to the stereo!" 

"Ray," Fraser said, somewhere between gentle and skeptical, "don't you think that might perhaps be a little paranoid?" 

"Nothing seems paranoid right now, Fraser! I'm panicking here! Join me, won't you?" 

Fraser puffed out a breath and leaned against the wall next to him. He was giving Ray one of his intense looks, and that was more reassuring- Ray'd seen that look over dozens of photos, files, and samples of mud, right before Fraser noticed something that no one else had, something they could use to crack the case and get the bad guy. 

"Do you love her?" Fraser asked. 

Ray blinked. Of all the troubleshooting techniques he'd come to expect from Fraser, asking really dumb and obvious questions was not one of them. "Of course I do! What are you even talking about?" 

Fraser nodded sagely, as if that was the answer he had been expecting. "And, I presume it's safe to assume, she also loves you?" 

"Yes, she does!" Ray snapped. 

"Well, then, forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the most important thing?" Fraser asked. 

"Love isn't always enough, Benny- if it was, we'd both still be married for the first time," Ray said. "Laurie wasn't wrong up there- Ange and I _were_ crazy about each other. And Stella was with Kowalski for twenty-two years! You think you stay that long when you don't love someone?" 

"Obviously," Fraser said. "But, returning to that particular point, had you considered that Ms. Zaylor wasn't wrong about the latter part of her toast?" 

Ray shook his head, trying to clear it. "Say what?" 

"It's understandable that you may not have absorbed it, considering the stress you were experiencing at the time," Fraser said, "but she made, I feel, a very sensible suggestion about why your previous marriages came to an end." 

"Oh, yeah?" Ray asked. 

"Yes," Fraser said. 

"And what was that?" 

"That perhaps they ended because they must," Fraser said, "because this marriage is the one that was meant to be." 

Ray swallowed hard. "How do I know that, Benny? How does anyone know that for sure?" 

"I'm afraid you can't, Ray," Fraser said. "No one ever does. But I know that the two of you loved each other enough to come this far- to try, regardless of how it went for you before. Sometimes, a willingness to try, even when you're unsure or afraid, is the only thing you truly need." 

Ray closed his eyes and tried to take that in. On the one hand, it felt like there was a lot that Fraser wasn't accounting for. Neither his nor Stella's taste in partners had changed that much over the years and the pain. Ray still liked smart-mouthed, insightful women who gave him a hard time, and he seemed to remember that that had been a huge problem with Ange towards the end, because that insight and the smart mouth she expressed it with had been applied to a lot of things that he hadn't wanted her to probe into, that he had wanted to keep hidden and secret even from the woman he had pledged to share everything with. Stella had a better idea of how to quit before he got too upset, and was more realistic about what people could really share even with the people they had loved the most, but still. 

And he hated to admit it, but he and Kowalski weren't as unalike as you might hope for, going into Marriage: Round Two. They both had that bravado and swagger, and the tendency to get stubborn and pushy when they thought they were right. Ray knew for a fact that while Stella thought it was cute, she didn't think it was cute all the time. She probably would've shot Kowalski for following her around with Orsini that time if she'd had a gun and he had pushed even a little harder. Ray was better at quitting while he was ahead, had learned the hard way in Vegas to learn to let the little things go before the little things ate him alive, and so far, his slip-ups with Stella were rare, and getting rarer all the time. But- still. 

On the other hand... even if they were conditional, those qualities counted for something. They counted for making him and Stella fit better with each other, for teaching them what not to do. They could learn from their mistakes, couldn't they? They could learn- _had_ learned- how to make it so the less-than-desirable stuff wasn't such a dealbreaker that love might not be enough. 

And while Ray didn't believe much in destiny, it wasn't entirely out of the question that Laurie and Fraser were right. That maybe- maybe this was all meant to be. 

Ray took a breath and felt his stomach unclench. "Thanks, Benny." 

"Any time, Ray," Fraser said. "Now let's go back inside. I believe the irresponsible levels of drinking portion of the evening was about to commence, and that it's traditional for grooms to let their hair down, so to speak." 

Ray laughed a little. "You gonna get your drink on tonight, Benny?" 

"I'm afraid not," Fraser said, smiling. "If I recall twenty-seventh district procedure on parties with alcoholic beverages correctly, I'll be required to perform the duties of designated driver. But I would still enjoy celebrating with everyone in spirit." 

Ray laughed again. "You're a real pal, Benny." 

"Thank you, Ray," said Fraser. "So are you." He clapped Ray on the shoulder and guided him back inside. 

When they got back inside, the irresponsible drinking portion of the evening had indeed commenced. Of all the things Ray had expected to see in the week leading up to his wedding, Welsh bug-eyed and bent backwards drinking from a beer bong while everyone else cheered him on was definitely not at the top of the list. 

Ray burst out laughing. "Did they even notice we were gone?" he asked. 

"I'm not sure," Fraser said, looking amused. 

Ray shook his head, remembering for the moment why it was that these people had been some of his best friends. 

"Hey," said a voice by his side, touching him lightly on the arm. 

Ray turned, startled. "Laurie, hey!" 

"Hi," she said, biting her lip and looking worried. "I'm sorry about the speech. I didn't mean to freak you out." 

"That?" Ray said, feigning incredulity. "Nah. I just wanted to make sure Fraser hasn't lost the rings. They got lost for like an hour at me and Ange's wedding. You reminded me, that's all." 

"Oh, yes," Fraser said. "I reassured him that I have them right here." He patted his pocket- a little unconvincingly for Ray's money, but he couldn't be great at everything. 

"Oh," Laurie said, looking relieved. "I was worried for a minute. So everything's okay?" 

Ray smiled and wrapped his arm around her shoulder, giving her a squeeze. "Yeah," he said. "Everything's gonna be okay." 

\-----

_Summer, 2001 - It's Not Too Late, It's Never Too Late_

Stella was aware that it was abnormal to have an existential crisis from the rearrangement of her furniture, but that didn't seem to be stopping her any. 

Moving to Florida meant moving her stuff around and putting it in boxes. She knew that. She had known that since before she and Ray had officially started the process, once they'd decided that it was what they were going to do once they were married. She knew it shouldn't be making her feel violated and robbed that other people were coming in to help with that. And yet. 

"Ooh," Frannie said, taking one of the more fragile and expensive things Stella owned- her favorite clock- off the wall. "This is nice. What'd you pay for that?" 

"Oh, I don't really remember," Stella said. In fact, she did- it had been three hundred dollars back in 1989, and she and Ray had had a huge fight about the extravagance of the purchase, even though that had been during the phase where they'd tried cost-splitting. But she suspected strongly that no matter how pretty she thought it was, Frannie wouldn't be any more impressed with the idea of spending three hundred dollars on a clock, even if it was Waterford crystal, than her ex-husband had been, and Stella didn't feel like being judged for a twelve-year-old splurge at the moment. "Could you be a little more careful with that?"

"Here," Barbara said, coming to Stella's rescue. "I got the butcher's paper. Why don't you let me wrap it?" 

Frannie quirked her eyebrows and held the clock out to Barbara. She looked at Stella with a teasing grin. "Little uptight about your stuff, huh?" 

Some guilt broke in through the annoyance, and Stella cringed. "A little," she said. "Sorry. Just, I've had it a long time, and I'm a little attached to it." 

Frannie shrugged. Apparently, it was immaterial to her whether or not her brother was marrying a woman who still internally reacted like a five-year-old when people touched her stuff. "We all got our little hang-ups," she said. "Though, just so we're clear, are you 'a little attached'--" Frannie made air quotes with her fingers as she said it. "--to everything in this apartment? 'Cause, that's gonna get interesting fast." 

"What do you mean?" Stella asked. 

"Hand me that box, would ya, Fran?" Barbara interjected. "The one that says glassware on it." 

Frannie passed the box to her without missing a beat. "Well, you know," she said. "Ray's got a lot of stuff. I'm pretty sure he's--" She did finger quotes again. "--'a little attached' to some of it, too." 

"So what?" Stella frowned. "It's a pretty big condo. I'm not really worried about having enough room." 

"Yeah, but aren't you worried that none of it will match?" Frannie asked. "Or that you're gonna end up with two of a bunch of stuff? Not that I can officially confirm or deny this, but a little birdie told me that Ma's giving you guys the grandfather clock for a wedding present. That's two of something right there, and one of 'em's probably gonna have to go. And you should probably decide before you get all the way to Florida what's staying and what's going, and who you might be giving the stuff you don't take to." 

Stella laughed a little. "Francesca, are you coveting my clock?" 

"I'm not saying that," Frannie said. "I'm just saying, no one wants two of everything, so it might be good to unload some of it. And some of this would look pretty nice at my place." She gave Stella an innocent look. 

Stella made a face at her. "For about a day," she said. "You have six children. Everything gets broken at your place." 

Frannie snorted. "Fine, fine," she said. "You got your thing where you're almost forty and you're set in your ways, I understand that." She tsked, shaking her head at the pitiable tragedy she seemed to be envisioning in her head. "My brother is pretty set in his ways, too, though. You mark my words, the first fight you're gonna have as a married couple is who gets to keep their pre-married stuff." 

Stella frowned. "We hadn't really talked about it," she realized slowly. 

"See?" Frannie said. "Wouldn't it be better if maybe you made some executive-type decisions about where any of this is going before you pack it all up and have to mail it back to your loving sister-in-law who warned you?" 

"Stella's going to win any argument they have on what stays and what goes," Barbara said easily. "She's a lawyer. She argues for a living. Anyway, the wife always wins the fight about what goes in the house. Damien's got three league bowling championship trophies in the garage." 

"The condo doesn't have a garage," Stella said. 

Frannie laughed. "Where are you gonna put Pop's pool table, then? I know Ray's gonna want to take _that_ with him." 

"I don't know," Stella admitted. "I mean, we've got a room set aside as a lounge that's got space for something big, but I thought that's where we'd put my piano." 

Frannie's lit up. "Ooh, can I have that if Ray takes the pool table? I was hoping to get the girls music lessons when they get bigger." 

Stella scowled at her. "I'm not giving you my piano." 

"Then where are you gonna put the pool table?" Frannie asked. "That table's practically the only thing Ray and Pop ever had in common. He loves it." 

Stella was starting to feel a little overwhelmed. Actually, that was inaccurate. She had already felt a little overwhelmed; she was starting to edge into a lot overwhelmed. "Can I get back to you on this later?"

Frannie shook her head, tsking again. "Mark my words. First fight, right here. Over who's too set in their ways." 

Stella took a few slow, deep breaths. "Excuse me for a moment," she said. "I should probably pack up my plants." Stella grabbed a box that was in no way the right size for her plants and headed for the balcony. She set the box aside the second she closed the door and began wildly ferreting around the floor. "Cigarettes, cigarettes," she muttered to herself. "Where are the damn cigarettes?" The cigarettes turned out to be stuffed in one of her potted plants. Stella tore them open and yanked out both a cigarette and her mini-lighter and began puffing for all that she was worth. 

_Keep it together, Stella,_ she thought. _It's just stuff. It doesn't matter. You're starting a new life. Calm down._

She heard the door behind her open and thought for a second about hiding the cigarette in her mouth again when a familiar voice spoke up behind her. "You know, when you were a little girl, I remember tact being very, very important to you. Did Stanley blow that out of you, or is it just an unlucky coincidence?" 

Stella laughed weakly. "Frannie's actually really nice when you get to know her," she said. 

"I'm sure," Barbara said. "At least, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be marrying into this family if they weren't very lovely when there aren't any extenuating circumstances." She moved to Stella's side and gently patted her back. "You okay, honey?" 

"Mm-hmm." Stella nodded emphatically. "Why wouldn't I be?" 

Barbara gave her a look. "Stella," she said, "I think we know each other better than that by now." Then she made a face. "I thought you quit smoking." 

"I'm cheating," she said, "until after the wedding." After the wedding. When she would be in Florida. Far, far away from her apartment and her friends and her family and her job and apparently where she quite possibly wouldn't even be taking half of her things. She dragged almost deep enough to choke. 

"Okay, sweetie," Barbara said, "calm down. Walk me through it. What's the matter? You're not really that hooked on a piano and a glass clock, are you?" 

"No," Stella said, defensive. 

Barbara raised her eyebrows. 

Stella hesitated, then hung her head with a sigh. "Yes. Maybe. Kind of." 

"Okay," Barbara said. "You wanna talk about it?" 

"I dunno," Stella said. "It's- it's kind of stupid." 

"Having a flash attack because you might not have to drag a piano across the country does seem a little queer, honey," Barbara said. "You might as well explain it to me." She wrapped a comforting arm around Stella's shoulders. "C'mon. You can tell me anything. I promise I won't laugh." 

Stella dropped her head to Barbara's shoulder. "Oh, Mama, it's just... everything in this apartment was my life." 

"Your decor was your life?" Barbara asked, confused. 

"No," Stella said, laughing weakly. "I mean- it's like it represents my life. Ray hated that clock and how much money I spent on it, and I gave up playing the piano for almost the entire time we were married. So when we split up, and I got this place, everything I put in it was like- like a symbol of how everything was going to be different. I could have an expensive clock without anybody scowling at it, and I had time and money again to play the piano if I wanted to. This- this place was where I started my life over." 

"Aw, sweetie," Barbara murmured sympathetically. "I know that means a lot to you. But you're starting a new life, in a new place, with new things." 

"That's just it," Stella said, pulling away from her and beginning to pace. "I'm starting over. _Again._ I have to figure everything out, _again._ Everything is changing, and maybe I'm not going to be able to change with it. I'm having a panic attack over a clock!" 

"Stella, come on," Barbara laughed. "You're being uncharitable with yourself here." 

"But you heard her in there!" Stella cried. "I've gotten comfy here! I'm too set in my ways for this! I'm almost _forty._ Who packs up their whole life and starts over again when they're forty?" 

"I did," Barbara said. "Only I was fifty, and we were moving to Arizona, not someplace ritzy like Florida." 

"That's different," Stella said. 

Barbara laughed. "Oh, it is, is it? Why?" 

"Because you and Damien had been married forever when you did it. You weren't starting over in a new place _and_ with a new person." 

"Ray Vecchio's a new person?" Barbara asked, raising her eyebrows again. "If I'm doing my math right, you've been together for almost two years. At least some of the novelty's got to have worn off." 

"He'll be my new husband," Stella said. "It's going to put some of the novelty back on." 

Barbara made a "pfft" noise and waved that away. "Stella, he'll still be Ray Vecchio. It'll be different, but it'll be a little the same. He's still gonna be the guy you fell in love with. That's not gonna change." 

"And what if I can't?" Stella asked. "What if we get there and I can't get used to it? What if everything is different except _me?"_

"That's not gonna happen," Barbara soothed. "I promise." 

"How do you know?" Stella asked. 

Barbara reached over and grabbed her chin to turn her to face her. "Because I know you," she said. "Stella... I'm not gonna lie and say I wasn't disappointed when it didn't work out with you and Stanley. But even though it didn't, you've always been a trooper. You can get used to anything you put your mind to getting used to." She smiled. "Doesn't this place and that clock you're so hung up on prove that?" 

Stella bit her lip. "I'm still scared." 

"You should be," Barbara said. "Life is scary." She hugged her close. "But that doesn't mean you can't do it." 

Stella hugged her back. "Can I pack you in a box and take you with me?" 

Barbara laughed and patted her back. "I think it'd be kind of a tight fit." 

Stella laughed, but hugged her a little tighter. "I'm going to miss you," she said. "And- this. All of this." 

"I know," Barbara said. "But you'll get through it." She kissed her cheek. "I believe in you." 

"Thanks, Mama," Stella whispered. 

"Any time, sweetheart," Barbara whispered back. "Any time." She slowly let go of her and smiled. "Now let's get back in there before your future sister-in-law tries making off with any of your stuff." 

Stella laughed. "Maybe I can pacify her with the coffee table," she said. "I never liked it much anyway." 

"Didn't I give you that table?" Barbara asked, giving her a mock-glare. Stella gave her an innocent smile. Barbara laughed, swatting her arm. "You're still trouble, Stella Kowalski." She smiled. "And you're gonna be just fine." 

\-----

 _Summer, 2001 - You Lost What?_

"Babe," Ray asked, stepping into the bathroom where Stella was busy flossing her teeth, "have you seen my tie?" 

"Which tie?" Stella asked, her voice slightly muffled by the presence of the plastic flosser hanging from her lower incisors. 

"The tie," Ray said. "The one I'm supposed to wear when we get married this weekend?" 

"Uh-uh," she said, shaking her head. "Isn't it with the rest of your suit?" 

"No," he said. "No, it is not. If it was with the rest of the suit, do you think I'd be asking if you'd seen it? You really think that's not the first place I looked?" 

Stella rolled her eyes. "Have you checked the boxes?" she asked. "Maybe it got packed by mistake." 

"Seriously?" Ray asked. "That's something that could've happened?" 

"Well, maybe," Stella said, shrugging as if this was a thing of no particular consequence. "If it was laying around, it might've got swept up. A lot of things got moved around the last couple days, I don't know that anyone would have noticed a tie." 

"How do you not notice a tie?" Ray demanded. "It's a tie!" 

"Of which you have fifty in my apartment," Stella reminded him. She gave him a suggestive smile. "You get pretty exuberant when you're taking off your clothes." 

For a minute, Ray was torn between accepting the invitation implied by that smile, and trying to avert the impending disaster that was encroaching on the horizon if every single piece of his groom's wear wasn't located on time. He clasped his hands to his temples and shook his head. "What box would it be in?" 

"I don't know," Stella said. "It'd depend on whether it was packed on purpose or by accident, wouldn't it? On purpose, it'd be in one of the clothes boxes, but if it was just picked up when someone was lifting something, it could be in the moving truck by now." 

Ray stared. "What?" he asked. 

Stella frowned. She popped the flosser out of her bottom teeth and started working on the top teeth. "What?" 

"Stella," Ray said, trying and failing to affect an air of patience, "are you actually saying to me, right now, that my tie for _our wedding_ could be in the moving truck that's not even parked outside your building, but probably halfway to Florida?" 

"It's possible," she said. "What's the big deal, Ray? If we don't find it, you can just wear another tie." 

Ray closed his eyes tight and brought his palm to his forehead. He felt like he was getting an ice cream headache, only from how frustrating his fianceé was, instead of as a by-product of having a delicious dessert. "Stell. I love you. But are you crazy?" 

Stella looked even more puzzled. "You're asking me this because I'm not getting worked up over a tie?" 

Ray rubbed hard at his forehead and temples. The ice cream headache feeling was spreading. "Stella, I can't wear a different tie. If I wear a different tie, it's not going to match your dress." 

Stella still wasn't getting it. "So what?" she asked. "I don't care if your tie matches my dress. _You_ don't care if your tie matches my dress. We went through seven ties shopping for you because we kept just picking them at random and it annoyed your mother." 

Ray gestured wildly at her, waiting for the obvious to sink in. 

Apparently, Stella still found her dental hygiene more interesting. 

"Stella, think about what you just said," Ray said slowly. "Think about my mother and Kowalski's mother, and the very first freaking explosion during this whole crazy shebang that we had to extinguish. And then you tell me what you think is going to happen if I go down the aisle on Saturday wearing the wrong tie." 

Stella froze. Then slowly, her eyes went from checking her teeth in the mirror to staring at his reflection behind her. 

Ray waited, giving her a look in the glass. 

"Oh, God," Stella moaned. 

"There it is," Ray said. 

Stella turned toward him, flosser still hanging from her mouth, and her eyes going wide and frantic. "Okay, you check under the couch, I'm going to check under the bed. If it's not in either of those places, you check my utility drawers, I'll go through whatever's left in the closet. If it still hasn't turned up, we'll start a sweep of the boxes that are still here." 

Ray knew, right then, that this was definitely true love. He was perving on his fianceé's organizational skills while she had a dental appliance hanging from her mouth. "If that doesn't work?" he asked. 

"Then we're going to Neiman's to try and find you an identical tie," she said. 

"I love you," he said, holding up one of his hands. 

"Love you, too." Stella high-fived him. 

"Okay," Ray said. "Ready? Break."

* * *

**Two Second Opinions**

* * *

_Summer, 2001 - Professional opinion_

Ray didn't really know what he was doing here. 

He didn't work at the 2-7 anymore, and being that Fraser had long since dropped the liaison job with the consulate and was using up his vacation time to be in Chicago, it wasn't exactly the best place to run into him anymore. If he wanted to talk to him specifically, all he'd have had to do was call up Fraser's motel room and see if he was in. 

But he'd stepped out of Stella's apartment for some air, and had found himself walking and then taxiing down to his old station house, inexplicably drawn to it. Like he needed to see it one last time to know that this was all real, and really happening. Or maybe, he thought, he just needed to say goodbye. 

The building itself hadn't changed much. The bullpen was virtually identical to how it had been when he left it, except that Elaine's old desk was covered in framed pictures of his nieces and nephews and a few knick-knacks that spelled Frannie in spirit, if not in actual, literal letters. He supposed one of those detective desks lying around here must be Elaine's now. Maybe even the one that used to be his and then Kowalski's. 

It was giving him the kind of creeps that Stella said she was getting from her apartment, now that it was finally empty of everything she owned. It was as if she had never lived there at all, she'd said. Or maybe even never existed in the first place, it was so easy to collapse six years of her life into boxes and make them go away. 

Well. Ray had experience with that feeling. 

He crossed the bullpen until he found himself standing at his old desk. If it _was_ Elaine's now, he couldn't tell just by looking at it. It looked like any other cop's desk, strewn with paperwork and a couple of coffee cups whose contents had been allowed to congeal in brown rings at the bottom. Add a paddle ball and a couple other doodads, and it could even still be his. 

Ray traced his fingertips along the surface of the wood, trying not to disturb any of the papers that were piled up across the top. He had spent almost ten years at this desk, shuffling through files and drinking bad coffee between phone calls that sometimes bordered on the ridiculous, especially once Fraser had entered the picture. This place had been his life before Vegas. And he'd never really properly gotten it back. One last weekend before he got shot and permanently benched on account of injury didn't count.

He didn't really want it back, he thought. He had a new life spreading out before him, and it looked pretty damn good to Ray. It was only... couldn't it be sad that something was over, even if it was time to move on? 

He chuckled and shook his head at himself. "Sentimental idiot," he muttered. 

"Hey, that's just what I was thinking," said a voice behind him. 

Ray nearly jumped straight into the ceiling before he turned around to see who it belonged to. He thought he'd been alone. 

And naturally, he'd been interrupted by the most annoying person in existence. "Kowalski," he said. 

"Vecchio," Kowalski said, rolling his eyes as if he thought Ray was being overly dramatic. "Sorry to interrupt your moment. Seems there's some stuff in the filing cabinet Welsh would like me to sign off on that didn't get taken care of before I left." 

"Oh, you mean your whole mess didn't have all the i's dotted and t's crossed before you ran off?" Ray asked. "I'm shocked." 

Kowalski let out a noise that might have been a laugh if it hadn't died so quickly. "What are you doing here, anyway?" he asked. "Isn't the, uh, big day tomorrow?" 

"Yeah, it is," Ray said. Christ, this was awkward. Ray had seen Kowalski since he and Stella had been together- all of twice, and both of those with Stella and Fraser there as buffers so they didn't have to interact directly too much if they didn't want to. He hated the feeling, but he hadn't really been ready for a solo mission yet. What the hell were you supposed to say to the guy you had spent most of your acquaintanceship with trading lives? Up to and including marrying his wife? 

_**My** wife_ , Ray corrected himself in his head. Or at least, almost his wife. 

"What, you getting nostalgic now that you're almost a new guy?" Kowalski asked. 

"What if I am?" Ray asked. "You got a problem with that, Stanley?" 

"Do you practice being irritating in front of the mirror, or does it just come natural?" Kowalski asked, making a face. 

"Oh, for you?" Ray asked. "I always go the extra mile on effort." 

Kowalski chuckled. "Yeah, okay," he said. "I buy that." He started going through the cabinet and taking out folders. 

Ray watched him for a moment. He thought of Stella, and how this weaselly lug had spent almost half her life with her. He thought of how she had hugged him in the airport when they'd gone to pick him and Fraser up, like he actually still mattered. He heaved a sigh and decided to actually go the extra mile on effort. "You're comin', right?" he asked. 

Kowalski laughed. "That is a negative," he said. "I'm happy for her and all, congratulations on your impending mutuals--" 

"Think you mean nuptials, Stanley," Ray said. 

Kowalski shook his head, like he couldn't believe this was his life. "You're a match made in heaven," he said, rolling his eyes. "She couldn't ever let that go, either." 

"Well, she's a smart woman," Ray said, smiling at him in a way that okay, probably irritated him, but once you got started, it really was hard to stop. Kowalski was one of those people who were so funny annoyed, it made it all but impossible to be nice to him. 

"Yeah, I know," Kowalski said. Then he looked Ray up and down and gestured between them. "No accounting for taste, though, I guess." 

Ray laughed. "Guess not," he said, shrugging. 

Kowalski looked him up and down again, then shook his head. "I'm never gonna get what she sees in you," he said. "But, never got what she saw in me, either, so I guess we're even." 

Ray did a pointed look from Kowalski's hair to his shoes. "Well, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say it wasn't your fantastic dress sense." 

Kowalski snorted. "Oh, yeah, you wanna go there? Guess who had to go through your closets, pal. Went through an extended Miami Vice phase, did ya?" 

"Hey, I'll have you know that was the height of cool at the time," Ray said. 

"What time? The early 80s?" Kowalski asked. 

Ray made a face. "Who asked you, anyway?" 

"Heh. No one," Kowalski said. He went back to sorting through the files. 

Ray felt a slight twist in his gut, and was annoyed at himself when he realized it was guilt. He drummed his fingers on the desk and sighed. "Hey." 

"Hm?" Kowalski grunted, not looking up from the file. 

"You okay with this?" he asked. 

That got him to look up. "Okay with what?" 

Ray shrugged. "Stella and me," he said. "Tomorrow." 

"Would it matter if I wasn't?" Kowalski asked sarcastically. "I don't see you calling this whole thing off because it doesn't have the Ray Kowalski seal of approval." 

"Not a chance in hell," Ray agreed. Then he shrugged. "But, I'm asking. Are you?" 

Kowalski looked at him for a moment, as if trying to gauge whether or not he was serious. He must've decided he was, because he dropped the hostile look and gave an awkward shrug of his own. "Yeah," he said. "Mostly. We were done for a long time before there was you, Vecchio." He tapped his pen on the file he had open, like he was trying to think of how to put something complicated. "We were done a long time before we were done, really. She just figured that out sooner than me." 

"So why aren't you coming?" Ray asked. "You know, your mother is?" 

Kowalski laughed. "Yeah, that sounds like my mom. They're pals. They have been for a while. It's just their thing. I don't ask." 

"So why not you?" Ray asked. "Have a whole Kowalski reunion at my wedding." Ray decided to take a calculated risk on Kowalski becoming infinitely more annoying. "She's keeping the name, you know." 

Kowalski smiled a little. "Yeah?" 

"Yeah," Ray said. "Don't let it go to your head. She swore up and down that it wasn't about you." 

"She's had it for a while," Kowalski said. "She earned it." 

"Some earning," Ray said. 

Kowalski rolled his eyes. "Am I detecting the dulcet tones of bitterness?" 

"A little," Ray said. "It's not exactly a summer joyride when your wife won't take your name because she wants to keep her ex-husband's. There was whining. Fits were thrown." 

There was an awkward beat. "Don't do that too much," Kowalski said. "She always hated my temper." 

Ray felt a little shock of surprise, but pretended to shrug it off. "Thanks for the tip." 

"Oh, you want tips on life with the Stella, I got lots of those," Kowalski said. "I could keep you in sticky notes for the rest of your natural life." 

"You know, I might hold you to that?" Ray said. "This isn't my first walk in the park, Kowalski, but I am hoping it'll be my last." 

It was Kowalski's turn to look surprised, but try to play it cool. He folded his arms across his chest and fiddled with his bracelet. "You scared?" 

"Pretty scared, yeah," Ray said. He gave Kowalski his best _You want to make something of it?_ look. 

Kowalski, it seemed, did not want to make something of it. "Yeah, well," he said. "Good. She's the best thing that's ever gonna happen to you. I should know. I speak from personal experience." 

"That your professional opinion?" Ray asked. 

"That is my professional opinion," Kowalski agreed. 

"You know," Ray said, "I really don't doubt it." 

Kowalski clicked his tongue and gave him an only slightly sarcastic thumbs up. 

Ray laughed. He hesitated a minute, then, "Seriously, though. Why don't you come?" 

Kowalski looked awkward. He chewed his lip and fiddled with his bracelet some more while he shuffled through three or four different postures. It was always itchy watching Kowalski move. He never looked like he even fit inside his own skin, let alone anywhere else. Ray guessed it wasn't an uncommon opinion, because Kowalski said, "I didn't really think I belonged. Kinda thought it was one of those, uh, empty gesture invites, since you had to invite my ma? And you probably didn't really want me there." 

"It'd mean a lot to her if you came," Ray said. 

"Just her?" Kowalski asked. 

"Fraser, too," Ray added. "And Frannie and my ma, since, for reasons beyond my ken, my family seems to really like you." 

Kowalski laughed again, and rubbed his hand up and down the back of his neck. "You serious?" 

Ray rolled his eyes. "No, Kowalski, I'm yanking your chain because I think it's really fun to try and convince you to come to my wedding. Will you just agree already?" 

For a second, Ray thought he got a glimpse of exactly what Stella had seen in him. When he was really happy, for real, Kowalski could light up Chicago with that smile. Jesus. "Yeah, all right, okay, I'll come." 

"Thanks," Ray said. 

"Don't thank me yet," Kowalski warned. "You know if you change your mind and run out on it and hurt her, I'll beat you to death with your shoes." 

"Only if she didn't get there first," Ray said. 

"Yeah," Kowalski said. "Or my ma. There'll be a pretty long line forming." 

"Then I'll just have to go through with it," said Ray, giving him a grin. He turned and started walking away from Kowalski and the desk they used to share. "See you tomorrow, Stanley." 

"See you tomorrow," he called back. "Just so you know, I'm sitting on the groom's side!" 

Ray laughed. "Kowalski," he said, "I wouldn't have it any other way."

\-----

_Summer, 2001 - Experienced opinion_

"Well, that's the last of your paperwork," Louise said. "You officially have no more open cases in the state of Illinois." 

Stella let out a relieved sigh. "Thank God," she said. "I was starting to think I wouldn't get through this backlog before the wedding and we'd have to postpone the honeymoon." 

"I still can't believe you're marrying Vecchio," Louise said, shaking her head. "It doesn't seem that long ago that he was hitting on me in chambers." 

"Believe me when I say it's your loss," Stella said, grinning. 

Louise laughed. "You never had any taste at all," she teased. 

"My taste is exquisite," Stella said. "You're just broken." 

Louise made a mock-affronted sound. "And to think, I was actually going to miss you around here." 

"You should miss me," Stella said. "Forty-one cases just became your problem." 

"Ugh," Louise groaned. "Thanks for the reminder. Go clean out your desk and get out of here before I decide to murder you and plead temporary insanity brought on by an intense workload." 

"It'd almost be worth it to see you pull off a diminished capacity defense," Stella said. She gave her a small smile. "I really will miss you, Louise." 

"I'll try to keep that in mind when I'm stuck with all your work," Louise said, a smile of her own teasing the corners of her lips. "Go on, get out of here. Good luck tomorrow." 

"Thanks," Stella said. "I know you can't make the ceremony, but you're coming for the reception, right?" 

"Try and stop me," Louise said. "The invitation said open bar. I have to get my revenge somehow, and I plan to do it by sticking you with an enormous liquor bill." 

"I'll look forward to it," Stella said, smiling beatifically. "See you tomorrow." 

"See you," Louise said. 

Stella headed out to the open office that used to be the workspace of her and several other assistant state attorneys. Well. It still was, for them. 

She made her way over to her desk, which looked pretty barren with all of the case files gone. All that was left was a bunch of pens, a stuffed ladybug that Ray (the first one) had seen fit to give her on her first day that she had never been able to bring herself to get rid of, and a framed picture of her and Ray (the one she was marrying in the morning) at Lincoln Park the day he had asked her to marry him. It was weird how long ago that seemed. Had it really been over a year? 

And now they were getting married tomorrow. Had the time gone by too fast, or too slow? She wasn't sure. But she supposed now wasn't the time to try and figure it out. She grabbed the cardboard box she'd left in her desk chair and started packing up her few measly belongings. 

She was in the process of taping the pens together so they wouldn't rattle, break, and leak when an unfamiliar woman poked her head in the door. 

"Hey," she asked, "St. Laurent still here? I'm on a chain of custody mission." 

"Yeah, she's just back there," Stella said, pointing over her shoulder. 

"Thanks," the woman said. She was walking past Stella with her evidence box when she stopped to watch her pack up her desk. "Quitting or fired?" 

Stella laughed. "Quitting," she said. "I'm getting married, then we're leaving Chicago." 

"Oh!" The woman exclaimed, nearly dropping her evidence box. "Then you must be Kowalski!" 

Stella raised her eyebrows. Was this one of Ray's friends from the twenty-seventh? "Yeah," she said. "News traveling all over the precinct?"

"Former immediate family is the highest link in the gossip chain," the woman said. "I'm Angie." 

Stella gaped at her. 

Angie seemed to take that as confusion. "Angie Vecchio?" she added. "You're marrying my ex-husband?" 

Stella snapped her jaw shut and tried not to drop her own box. "I know! Oh- I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stare. I just wasn't expecting to meet you- ever, really. Hi!" 

Angie looked like she was having a hard time not bursting out laughing at her. "Hi," she said. She shifted the box to her other arm so she could offer Stella her hand. 

Stella shook it. "Wow," she said. "You still look just like your pictures." 

"Thanks," Angie said. "You... look nothing like I pictured you. I never thought Ray'd go for a blonde." She smiled apologetically. "Not that that's a bad thing! Just- really not what I pictured." 

"Yeah," Stella said, laughing awkwardly. "You're not the first one to be caught off guard." 

"I bet," Angie said. "Did his mother have a cow when he wasn't marrying Italian?" 

"A very, very small one," Stella said. "I think she's used to me now." 

"Well, that's good," Angie said, nodding. "That's great. Good for you. And hey, good for you for getting out of Chicago while you can. The beginning of the end for us was moving in with his family." 

"Yeah, I-I heard," Stella said. "I never really understood that. They all seem like they still really like you, whenever your name comes up." 

"Oh, we liked each other fine," Angie said. "Just- you know. Living with Ray living with them right after his dad died... it wasn't the funnest time." 

Stella winced. "No, I suppose it wouldn't be," she said. "Uh, sorry, I guess." 

Angie laughed. "Please! Don't be sorry. My loss is your gain. I'm not bitter or anything. We really rushed into it too fast, to tell you the truth. We were only together five months when we got hitched." 

"Oh," Stella said. "Ray never told me that part." 

"Well, he wouldn't," she said. "I bet he doesn't really talk about me much." 

"Not a lot," Stella admitted. "But enough." She shook her head. "You made my life difficult by proxy when I told him I was keeping my name." 

"Oops," Angie said, giggling. "Sorry about that. But you know, you get the chance to ditch a name like Tehrani, you kinda gotta take it. I like Vecchio." She paused. "I like Kowalski, too." 

"Oh, please, Stella," she said. "You can call me Stella." 

"Okay," Angie said. Then she grimaced. "Stella Kowalski? Really?" 

"It's a long story," Stella said. "Let's not get into the hairy details." 

"Fine by me," Angie said. "Still, I can't believe you're not leaping at the chance to get something else." 

"Well, it's been with me for a really long time," Stella said. "I've gotten so many weird looks and used it as an ice breaker at so many parties now, I'm kind of attached to it." 

"I guess I could see that," Angie said. "Certainly gives you more to work with than Tehrani." She peered at Stella tentatively. "So, uh, when's the big day?" 

"Tomorrow, actually," Stella said. "I'm just cleaning out my desk before I go home and sleep by myself for the very last time." 

"Oh, you're doing the sleeping apart thing?" Angie asked. "That's nice. Supposed to be good luck, anyway. We didn't do that, so I guess we suffered the consequences." 

"I didn't, either, with my first husband," Stella said. "So I guess Ray and I have good reason to be a little superstitious." 

"Superstition gets an unjustly bad rep," Angie said. "And getting married again, to somebody else who's also getting married again? You should take all the good luck you can get and run with it." 

"That's the plan," Stella said. "Hope it works." 

"It will," Angie said, waving it away. "You two look happy," she added, nodding at the picture in Stella's box. 

"Oh," Stella said. "Thanks." She gave Angie a tentative smile of her own while she shrugged. "Well. We are." 

"That's good," Angie said. "And I'm not just saying that. I hope you two keep being happy. I hope you guys are happy for a very long time." 

"That's really nice of you," Stella said. "Uh, I'm sorry we didn't invite you to the wedding. I didn't think of it, and I guess Ray thought it'd be awkward." 

Angie laughed. "Don't worry about it. I got better things to do than go to my ex-husband's wedding, believe me." She jiggled the evidence box in her arms for emphasis. "I'm working CSU now, and I've got a double shift tomorrow." 

"Oh," Stella said. "I guess you are pretty busy, then." 

"Yep," said Angie. "I like it. Busy suits me. Are you gonna get another job in a prosecutor's office, when you get wherever you're going?" 

"I don't think so," Stella replied. "I mean, I'm not ruling it out, but we thought we'd take it easy for a while, and then maybe think about starting our own business." 

"Oh, doing what?" Angie asked. 

"Right now, it's down to opening either a bar or a bowling alley," Stella said. 

"Oh, go bowling alley," Angie said. "That was Ray's life dream when he was a little kid." 

"Really?" Stella laughed. 

"My hand to God," Angie said. "His ma didn't tell you?" 

"No," Stella said. "She doesn't know we're thinking of opening a place when we get to Miami. It was just kind of something he floated out, when we were talking about what we should do with our effective retirement from criminal justice." 

"Wow," Angie said, grinning. "He trusts you more than he trusted me. He never let on he'd even thought about it when we were married." 

"Sorry," Stella said. 

"Quit apologizing," Angie said. "Water under the bridge." She combed her hair back out of her face with her fingers. "Look, I gotta take this back to St. Laurent before my lieutenant skins me alive. Good luck with the wedding and the business and all." 

"Thanks," Stella said. "It was nice meeting you." 

"You, too," Angie said. "Tell Ray I said hi. And, congratulations, on finding the right one. Just from the last five minutes, I can tell you two are good for each other." 

"I appreciate that," Stella said. "And I will. Tell him, I mean." 

"You do that," Angie said. "And don't worry about anything. You're gonna have a great day tomorrow." 

Stella crossed her fingers and held them up. "I hope so," she said. 

"I know so," Angie said, beaming, before she turned and left.

* * *

**One Last Try**

* * *

_Summer, 2001 - Forever_

The day of the wedding dawned bright and clear. The sun was shining, the clouds were nowhere to be seen, and there was a light breeze over the lake they call Michigan, keeping everything from getting too hot and gross. 

Ray decided to take it as a good sign. He couldn't have asked for better conditions, especially for an outdoor wedding. He and Stella had both done the church thing before, and they had decided that this time, they wanted something different. They were going to be tying the knot in a matter of minutes out on Hollywood Beach, Chicago's own little piece of something like Florida. 

"Is my tie on straight?" he asked the best man. 

"As a ruler," Fraser replied. "And a very nice color, too." 

"Thanks," Ray said. "Don't tell my ma, but this is an emergency replacement tie. We lost the one she picked out." 

"Oh, dear," Fraser said. 

"If you can keep anybody from noticing, I'll owe you for life," Ray added. 

"I shall endeavor to do so to the best of my abilities," Fraser said. "I've found that being in a bright red suit helps." 

Ray laughed. "Hey, the uniform still looks great on you. Not itching too much, is it?" 

"Not at the moment," Fraser said. 

"Got the rings?" Ray asked. 

"Of course, Ray," he replied. He touched his pocket again. "Right here." 

"Great," Ray said. He drew a breath and checked his watch. "I hope the rest of our party gets ready quick, or I'm gonna be late for my own wedding." 

"Oh, I'm sure they'll be along," Fraser said. 

As if summoned by the power of a vague reference, Kowalski made his way up to them, trying to get his arms into his suit jacket without dropping the unknotted tie hanging loose around his neck. "Fraser, will you get this thing? It won't do what I want. It never does what I want." 

"Geez, Kowalski," Ray said, laughing. "You're making me regret talking you into coming, and the ceremony hasn't even started yet." 

"Shut up," Kowalski said, glaring at him. "I hate these things, they never work." 

Fraser took over knotting his tie. "Hold still, please," he said. "We'll have it sorted in a jiffy." 

"Sure, you will," Kowalski said. "Everything does what you want it to." 

"Now that just isn't true," Fraser said, but he knotted Kowalski's tie in under five seconds. "There. I think now we're just about ready." 

"We're still missing the main attraction," Ray said, then yelled up the stairs, "Hon, you ready to go?"

"Almost!" Stella yelled back. "I just need another second!"

Kowalski snorted. "Get used to that sentence," he said. "You're going to be hearing it a lot." 

"I'll be sure to add that to the sticky notes," Ray said, rolling his eyes. 

"Maybe you should go warm up the car while we're waiting," Kowalski said. "And, you know. Rewire the stereo, paint the house--" 

"I hardly need _that_ much time to get ready, Ray," Stella said from the top of the staircase. "Well? How is it?" 

"Oh my," Fraser said. 

Ray stared. 

Stella was like something out of a beautiful dream Ray never wanted to wake up from. She'd done her makeup that subtle way she had of doing it so she looked like she wasn't wearing any, and pinned her hair back so only one little piece fell across her forehead, practically crying out for him to touch it. The dress she wore was a powder blue jersey dress, and as promised, they made her eyes stand out like stars, helped even more by the little spray of blue forget-me-nots pinned behind her ear. 

"Amazing," Ray said. 

"Wow," Kowalski said. "Okay, Vecchio, get her to the car quick, before I change my mind, take back my blessing, and kidnap her for myself." 

Stella laughed. "Ray," she said, in a scolding tone. 

"You do that, Kowalski," Ray said, "and Fraser is authorized by ancient tradition to shoot you." 

"That's actually true," Fraser said. "Historically, the role of the best man was to have a second duelist to fend off other suitors." 

"Yeah, yeah," Kowalski said. "Shut up." 

The second she reached the foot of the stairs, Ray linked his arm through Stella's. "You ready to go?" he asked. 

"Of course," she said. 

"You really do look amazing," he said. 

"Fingers crossed you still think that in twenty years," she teased. 

"Stella," Ray said honestly, "I'm still gonna think that when I'm dead." 

They made their way out to the car- Kowalski's, unfortunately, since Ray was still on the search for another Riv. Normally, he'd be joshing Kowalski about it a little, but he stayed quiet, sitting next to Stella in the backseat while Kowalski drove, unable to take his eyes off of her. 

Ray stroked her knee the whole way there while she beamed at him and stroked his cheek with her thumb. He was distantly aware this was supposed to be the part where he was nervous, but he felt like he had forgotten how to be nervous. How could he, when she was sitting right there next to him, smiling at him like he was the only thing that mattered to her in the whole world? How had he ever even experienced a moment of doubt?

They pulled up at the beach, where the rest of their friends and family were already waiting. 

"You two need a minute alone?" Kowalski asked, looking at them over his shoulder. 

"You know," Stella said, "I think we just might." 

"Ah," said Fraser. "Excuse us." He climbed out of the car and circled around so that he could walk down the beach with Kowalski. 

The second they were gone, Stella took a breath and looked at Ray, and he could see her nervousness shining through. "No regrets?" she asked. 

"None whatsoever," Ray said. "I really wanna kiss you right now." 

"Save it for the ceremony," she whispered. But she sneaked a kiss on his cheek, anyway. 

Ray got out of the car and went around to open her door for her. His brain clouded over again for a second at the picture she made getting out of it, like a princess in an old movie. He was really glad that they'd decided not to write their own vows; he didn't trust himself to be able to remember a script right now. 

He remembered- distantly, almost like something that had happened to somebody else- that he'd felt that way the first time. He wondered if Stella was feeling the same thing. 

He'd learned a lot since that last time, oh so long ago, and he knew Stella had, too. It wasn't going to be the best, or perfect- they'd both been through this before and knew better than that. But in the end, it was going to be theirs- and that was the most important thing. 

Ray puffed out a breath as he reached over to take her hand. "Wanna go start the rest of our lives?" he asked. 

Stella smiled. "I do."


End file.
